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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27438124">Truer Than North</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Muccamukk/pseuds/Muccamukk'>Muccamukk</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Pacific (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Haldane and Jones Don't Die, Amnesia, Angst with a Happy Ending, Dubious Science, Fishing, Getting to Know Each Other, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Period-Typical Language, Post-Canon, Pychology Doesn't Work Like This, Reunions</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-11-07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-11-28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-07 01:48:27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>30,583</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27438124</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Muccamukk/pseuds/Muccamukk</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Even months after he took that shot to the head, Andy still doesn't remember the events of the last three years, and letters from a mysterious Edward Jones are piling up.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Andrew A. "Ack-Ack" Haldane/Edward "Hillbilly" Jones</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>38</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>58</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Loose Lips Sink Ships Prompt Meme</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Based on the LLSS prompt: "They both survive the war, but Andy's head injury and general trauma cause him to block out all his experiences in the pacific, and his promises to Eddie. Eventual happy ending with them together, please."</p><p>Title from "On Board" by Alana Henderson and Joshua Burnside, one of my all time favourite Andy/Eddie songs.</p><p>I am aware that head trauma probably doesn't work like this. Fly fishing doesn't either, but at least I tried on that one.</p><p>Also go check out <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24343969/chapters/69720219">this fantastic cover art</a> by Zoroastre!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"Remember me?"</p><p>Andy turned in his chair—the blanket his mom insisted on falling from his shoulders—and studied their guest with a questioning look. He held his face still so long that the visitor's boyish grin crumpled into contrition.</p><p>"Ah, damn, I'm sorry, Andy, I..."</p><p>"It's Davie, right?" Andy said, keeping up his vague expression until Everett Pope's eyes narrowed in suspicion. Then Andy winked, and they both grinned at each other. "Course I remember you, Rhett. Mug like yours is hard to forget." He levered himself out of the armchair and let the handshake turn into a hug. There was a strength in Everett's arms that Andy hadn't gotten back yet.</p><p>"Had me for a second there," Everett admitted as he settled in the love seat next to Andy's chair.</p><p>The fire made the sitting room too warm, and Everett tugged his tie loose as Andy abandoned the blanket. A cup of cold tea sat at his elbow, ignored since lunch. Andy ought to offer something to a guest, his mom having vanished after letting Andy's visitor in, but he didn't want to stop looking at his friend yet. Last time he remembered seeing Everett, he'd been in tennis whites, not Marine greens, and about three years younger, or maybe it was more like a hundred years. His posture in the love seat was poised and careful, not the arrogant sprawl he'd perfected at Bowduin College. Andy didn't understand how to read all the medals and ribbons scattered across Everett's chest, but knew a purple heart when he saw one, and the oak leaf clusters of a major.</p><p>"Hard to forget," Andy murmured, the prank seeming in poor taste all of a sudden.</p><p>Eyes wide with the damnable pity Andy had gotten so sick of, Everett reached across the side table and squeezed Andy's wrist. "Heard you got your bell rung pretty good."</p><p>"You could say that." Andy turned to the crackle and spit of the fire, unable to hold Everett's dark gaze, or even to look at him. Everett still had that roll of puppy fat that doubled his chin when he smiled, and the familiarity was more than Andy could bear. At least with his parents, no one knew more than he did, not once Andy had reread his own letters home: a stranger's words in his own handwriting. Everett had fought on the same islands as Andy, all across the Pacific, even if he hadn't been there when Andy had taken that bullet to the skull. "I don't remember any of it," he admitted softly, wanting to get the pity over with.</p><p>"Yeah, I heard," Everett told him, voice low and sympathetic, like it had been when Yale had clobbered Bowdoin in the second half. Everett was going to Yale now, the traitor.</p><p>"All a blank," Andy added, wanting to put off the usual set of questions. A few months out of the hospital, Andy had a neat little script memorised: "Last thing I remember, I was coaching football at Bowdoin, then I wake up in a military hospital, and the docs tell me I've missed two Silver Stars and three years."</p><p>He didn't talk about the flashes he got in his dreams, the way that smells that shouldn't have been familiar brought back sensations he shouldn't have known, or how his body moved on instinct sometimes, like someone else was pulling its strings. He didn't say that those three years loomed in his mind every minute of every day, like he was missing a hand but kept reaching out with it. Maybe he didn't have to.</p><p>Andy shook himself. He really should offer Everett something to drink. He didn't move. Even out of the hospital and back in his hometown, his life seemed to be straight-jacketed by his own inertia.</p><p>"Well," Everett said after too long, "I think if I could forget that fucking war, I would too."</p><p>Andy nodded. It wasn't the first time he'd heard that he was lucky to have forgotten; maybe if he gave it a year or ten, he'd even start to talk himself around to that point of view.</p><p>"Hear you turned Blue," Andy said. Almost all of his college buddies were overseas still, and he hadn't been able to catch up with gossip.</p><p>"That's right, even got Uncle Sam to pay for it," Everett said, and indulged Andy in a round of who was where, and what they were doing. Ellie had moved down to New Haven and had a bun in the oven already, and Everett was glowing with the pride of it, eager to accept congratulations. Andy offered them wholeheartedly, shamefully glad he hadn't woken up with a ring on his finger. That at least he hadn't forgotten. Or he didn't think he had. It was hard to separate the longing in his heart between things he thought he ought to have and shadows of things he'd really lost.</p><p>Still, Andy made himself smile as he asked, "Say, I didn't leave a fiancée in Australia or something, did I?"</p><p>Everett's expression caught, like a record needle hitting a scratch. He looked at Andy with the same narrowed expression as he'd worn when Andy'd faked having forgotten him. "Not that I know of."</p><p>"We were on leave there at the same time, weren't we?" Andy pressed, the joke having turned serious. His letters home had mentioned seeing Everett in some city called Melbourne in '43. The familiar name had been a relief in a sea of strange details.</p><p>"Didn't see you a whole hell of a lot," Everett said. "We were in different regiments, billeted on opposite sides of town." There was more to it than that, and Andy could see Everett weighing what to tell him, but in the end, he just shrugged and said, "You mostly kept to your own company."</p><p>That seemed strange to Andy. He'd never been much of a loner, preferring to be surrounded by his friends whenever he could. He'd spent college in the constant company of his fraternity, his teammates, student council, his bandmates, and would have imagined that he'd spent his military career in an equivalent way. Maybe war did change a man, but was that true if the man didn't remember being changed?</p><p>Certainly it seemed to have made Everett stiffer and more cautious, but perhaps that was just the stranger now living in Andy's body.</p><p>"Have you heard from any of them?" Everett asked, pushing past Andy's silent awkwardness.</p><p>"From who?"</p><p>"Your company."</p><p>Andy flushed, realising that he'd utterly misunderstood Everett's earlier comment, not known a military term that should have been as familiar as breathing. "No," he said, then hesitated. That wasn't true. Andy sighed and pulled the blanket around himself even though he was already too warm. "I had a stack of letters waiting for me when I got home, all with Marine Corps postmarks, but..." Andy stopped. He didn't know how to say it'd felt like reading a stranger's mail. He hadn't recognised a single name, and they'd all known a different man.</p><p>"I'm sure you'll feel up to it soon," Everett said, but his smile was disappointed. He knew as well as Andy did that Andy had let his boys down.</p><p>He would read the letters that night, Andy resolved. He was long past the trouble he'd had focusing, and his head hardly even ached at night any more. No more excuses.</p><p>Everett didn't stay long after that, having done his duty to a fallen comrade. He was visiting his own parents for the weekend, and vaguely promised to return, but Andy suspected he wouldn't. They'd had their whole lives in common before, but now the gulf of the war divided them, impossible to do more than shout across.</p><p>The visit left Andy quieter than usual all through dinner. His parents had gotten used to their formerly loquacious youngest child's sombre silences, papering over them with talk of the small business of the factory and the town, what the President had said on the news, how Andy's older brother and sister were doing. The war wouldn't last much much longer, everyone said, and Andy's father was already talking about how the company was going to retool the textile mill for peacetime.</p><p>After he'd helped with the dishes, Andy drifted upstairs and dug out the stack of letters. There'd been about a couple months worth when he'd gotten out of the hospital—some error of Marine Corps mail having routed them here, not to Andy's sickbed—and the same number again had piled up since. Every day, Andy had told himself that he'd start at the beginning and read forward until he'd caught up with the newest letters, and every day he'd found a new excuse to put it off.</p><p>The truth was that he was afraid of what he might read. Everyone he'd seen who'd come back had been marked by the war, and Andy wasn't sure he was ready to face how it might have marked him, who he might have become. He hoped he hadn't been this much of a coward under fire. The collection of citations he didn't remember earning suggested one thing, the fact that somewhere deep in his mind he'd apparently elected not to remember any of it suggested another.</p><p>Andy sorted the letters by date, before realising that there were more or less two categories: one or two letters each from a variety of names, and the same number combined from an E.A. Jones, who'd started as a lieutenant, then turned into a captain after a few months. Jones must have written Andy once a week to have accumulated so many letters, though the number of them thinned out towards the end. It was almost summer now, and just one recent letter from Jones, this one not carrying the Marine Corps stamp, but an address in Pennsylvania. Andy remembered his mother giving it to him just a few days ago, and nearly choking on the guilt of not having any real intention of reading it.</p><p>Sticking the latest letter from Jones on the bottom of the pile, Andy decided that he would work his way through the miscellany of the other men's letters. He could send a short reply to each, letting them know that he'd gotten home okay. After that, Andy could deal with the more weighty concerns of the other pile.</p><p>It took Andy until almost midnight to read and reply to his men's letters. Most of them were short expressions of concern sent via v-mail. Andy gathered that seeing him wounded had been quite a blow to morale. Some expressed gratitude for his leadership and kindnesses offered over the years. Too many included casualty lists of men who'd gotten it after Andy had, or updates on wounded men. Andy wasn't sure how many men were supposed to be in a company, but it seemed to him that there hadn't been a lot left after they'd gotten off that last island.</p><p>Andy felt the grief of that pull at him, but in an abstract way, like when he read accounts of battles in the newspaper. It was a damn shame that so many fine young men'd had their lives cut short, but Andy hadn't known them. Still, he made sure to express his regret, and say something kind and encouraging to each man who'd taken the time to write to him. When he was done, eyes sagging, fingers stained with ink, he had a stack of a dozen letters to post in the morning, and a resolve to tackle writing to Jones the next day.</p><p>That night, Andy barely slept. Everett's look of disappointment mixed with pity lingered, and Andy knew he wasn't doing right by his boys. He might not know what leading Marines into battle felt like, but he'd captained and then coached a football team, and he knew that they could sense when a leader was goldbricking.</p><p>After breakfast, Andy combed back through his own letters home, and started making notes of names and places, all the particular incidents he's mentioned. He filled a notebook with shorthand about who was who, and what island they'd been on. Mention of one Edward "Hillbilly" Jones started cropping up on Guadalcanal, and intensified in Melbourne, he noticed, until the man had been made the company's executive officer before Peleliu. It seemed as though Jones was the man Andy had spent his free hours with, not Everett Pope. Strangely, the A stood for Alison, same as Andy's middle name.</p><p>Andy examined his own life, like he would have examined a play by Aeschylus in order to write a term paper, then he turned back the letters from his men, reading through for context, and hauled out his copy of the USMC handbook to understand the jargon, though some of that still eluded him. By mid afternoon, Andy had rewritten all his letters, and felt like he might get a passing mark. If he sounded a little off to his men, he hoped that they'd chalk it up to his writing being more formal than his speech and, perhaps, to having been shot in the head. He sat back, satisfied with himself for managing to impersonate his former life. He might not remember these men, but he knew they deserved better than to learn they could be forgotten.</p><p>He went for a walk in the afternoon, and tried to work out what to do about Jones' letters. He found the volume of the stack daunting, and the implied emotional connection even more so. It was cowardice to keep avoiding them, and he was letting a good man down by doing so.</p><p>Andy returned home winded, but feeling better for having his body back under his control. The military doctors said he could start running again, if he liked, and he hoped to get back into game shape before the fall. Bowduin had kept their offer of the assistant coach position open.</p><p>The pile of letters from Jones was still there on his desk when he returned. Taking a deep breath like he did before he stepped out on the field, Andy picked up the one dated not long after he'd been injured. It was another v-mail letter, but it'd obviously bounced around a bit before it found Andy's parents. The paper was worn thin from care and travel, the ink smudged from rain or humidity, or just too many hands. Andy turned it over and carefully slit the end to slide the page out.</p><p>"Dear Andy," it started, "You're a damn fool. Burgin wrote to say you got hit. Please God be ok. Send word, if you can. I'm gonna make myself sick worrying. Or sicker, I guess, but the docs say I'm healing up okay..."</p><p>Two hours later, Andy had read all of Jones' letters three times, and was certain that he could never answer them.</p><p>He might have been able to cram on the topic his own life enough to bullshit past his men—though now he wasn't sure if that would work either—but not someone like this. Not to someone who'd written to Andy with such overwhelming familiarity, and talked about his hopes for a future together after the war. Andy had promised Jones something, something Jones held dear, but hadn't described in the letters. Some business venture, perhaps?</p><p>Andy considered the possibility of writing and telling Jones the truth of the matter. He had his script, after all. So far it'd been enough to appease military doctors and civilians alike, even if it didn't quite erase the pain in his mother's eyes. Andy couldn't imagine what it would do to someone who clearly cared about the man he'd been at war, and who was counting on him to have come back just as he'd been.</p><p>No, he decided as he lay staring at the ceiling that night, he couldn't say something like that in a letter. It would be bad as one of those black-bordered things Western Union delivered: "We regret to inform you that..."</p><p>Jones's final letter had said that he was in southern Pennsylvania visiting his family, and would be for the next month until he shipped out again. He'd said that Andy should come down if he could. The implication that he'd taken a meaning from Andy's silence was clear, but Jones had still wanted to see Andy.</p><p>Andy didn't sleep any better that night than he had the one before, lying awake with bits and pieces of Jones' letters floating through his head: "Keep perking up around mail call, hoping to hear from you," "Getting stronger every day, you won't I was hit at all," "Most days, all I think about is what we'll do after we get out," "Hell, I miss you you something awful," "Maybe the Corps' losing your letters," "Remember that day when we drove out to the beaches?"</p><p>Before dawn, Andy rose, dressed and left for the train station. He caught an early commuter into Boston, then changed lines for Philly, changed again there, and finally ended up in a whistlestop near the Maryland border some time after lunch.</p><p>Andy spent the whole trip staring out the window instead of reading his novel, asking himself what the hell he was doing. He'd barely even thought about it until he was on that first train, and after momentum had carried him to the next, and the next. And why? Was he travelling all this way because he needed to act with consideration towards Jones, or was Andy chasing down the void in his memory?</p><p>The idea that he'd done something he needed to forget kept nagging at him. Everett wouldn't tell him, might not even know, but it sounded like Jones and Andy had lived in each other's pockets for years. Jones could be able to tell Andy anything he might want to know about those missing years, if Andy had the courage to ask him. And yet, Andy wasn't sure if that was a fair request. He remembered Everett's sudden profanity and further avoidance of the topic of what had happened on those islands. Would Jones too like to forget that fucking war? How would he feel about the appearance of Andy, full of questions, wanting to tear open old wounds, especially when Andy himself wasn't going to be the man Jones had invited or expected?</p><p>Andy mulled over the ethics of the situation as he walked from the train station into town. The stationmaster had given him directions, but he hardly needed them. The little town was more a crossing of roads than any place one would need a map to, and Jones' mother's house turned out to be next to the general store, which was next to the post office, which was kitty-corner from the church and across the street from the bar. The Jones house had a picket fence, and a yard full of some sort of bright spring flower.</p><p>A man in his shirtsleeves knelt on the sidewalk outside the fence, studiously applying a fresh coat of white paint. He was tall—his rangy body curled up to painstakingly edge the bottom of a fence post—and had a mess of sandy brown curls cropped on the sides and back to keep them off his collar and ears. He glanced up as Andy approached, first casually, then in a double take. His bright blue eyes stood out in a triangular face.</p><p>Andy stopped at the corner, and looked at the man who had to be Captain Edward Jones, trying to tell if he was familiar at all, but felt nothing. It was like seeing a stranger, or maybe someone he'd read about in the paper, but never met.</p><p>Jones clearly knew him. Even from ten yards away, Andy could see that he was shaking as he carefully laid the paint brush down across the rim of the can. He tried to still his hands by wiping them on a rag, but even as he did a hundred emotions flashed across his face. Jones was wide-eyed with fear, or maybe hope, or just plan shock, and his mouth kept almost curving into a smile, then falling back into a tight grimace of something between anger and regret. He stood slowly, rising to a little better than Andy's height, and took three long strides towards Andy. His hands lifted as though he were about to take Andy's face between them, and his face split with a grin, but when he caught Andy's cautious reserve and folded arms, Jones faltered and stopped a polite distance away. He leaned his head forward, peering at Andy, and asked, "Ack-Ack?"</p><p>From his own letters home, Andy knew that was the nickname he'd picked up in the Marines, the phonetic alphabet version of his initials, the name of a weapon, but it didn't sound like his name, and he felt bizarrely impelled to deny the question. Instead he replied, "Captain Jones," in a tone he hoped implied friendly goodwill.</p><p>It seemed to be the wrong choice. Jones' smile faltered and then set into a forced show of cheer. Andy felt as though he'd delivered an entire message in those two words, and it was one Jones had been dreading, but he'd be damned if he knew what it was.</p><p>"You'd better come inside," Jones said, words tilted by a southern accent that Andy hadn't expected. He turned without another word, and walked towards the gate, bending to pick up the painting things on the way by. He moved with a long, loping stride, and Andy watched the way his sweaty shirt clung to the contours of his back. Jones might be rangy, but every inch of him was muscle. He had the same coiled control in his movements that Everett had, and Andy wondered at it even as he followed Jones into the house.</p><p>"You alone here?" Andy asked. The house had the blinds drawn against the heat, but Jones didn't turn on the lights as he strode through a narrow front hall to a laundry room at the back, seeming to expect Andy to follow.</p><p>"Ma's minding the store, and kids are at school," Jones said, as though Andy should know who that meant. He undoubtedly should. "No one'll be back for a couple hours."</p><p>His tone implied that he expected a fight, and one that might take about that long. Andy watched as Jones set down the paint bucket and wet the rag so that he could wrap the brush for later use. Andy didn't know what to say, so he leaned against the jamb and said nothing. The room smelled of soap and damp, and had no window, and there was so little space between them that Andy could have reached out and put his hand on Jones' bunched shoulder.</p><p>Jones turned sharply, and took a step back until he was braced against the mangle clamped to the sink. He's expression looked as cornered as his stance, and Andy wished he had a way to look smaller, or less whatever it was that Jones clearly feared.</p><p>"You look good," Jones said, then clarified, "can hardly see the scar."</p><p>"Planning to grow my hair over it anyway," Andy said. He had a few months' worth of stubble after the nurses had done shaving his head to keep the dressings clean. It'd come in grey, and kept startling Andy every time he caught his own reflection. He supposed he ought to say that Jones looked something, but Andy didn't know what point of comparison to use, so he shifted topics. "I got your letters."</p><p>"Sorry for carrying on like that," he said, and his hands left the mangle so that he could jam them in his pockets. His shoulders hunched in even further, and Andy thought that if Jones could curl up like a hedgehog, he would. "You must think I'm a proper fool."</p><p>"I don't!" Andy protested. "That's the last thing I could think of you."</p><p>Jones snorted. "Yeah, five months without a single godamned word from you made that real clear. Wasn't like you didn't know where I was."</p><p>"I..." Andy didn't know how to answer that. The shame of ignoring those letters for so long rose up again, but at the same time he knew that not explaining now would only make things worse. Jones didn't deserve what Andy had done to him, no one did. "I'm sorry," Andy said, and tried to gather the words for an explanation. His script melted away like tissue paper in the rain.</p><p>"Not as sorry as I am," Jones snarled, the anger and hurt breaking through his attempts at reserve. "Don't know why you bothered to come down here, when you coulda just sent me a Dear John letter, and had done with me."</p><p>That was certainly one way to put it, but Andy felt like he was losing ground, and rushed to stem Jones' anger. "I came to explain," he insisted, which was, again, the wrong thing.</p><p>"Don't seem that complicated to me." Jones set his jaw, and swallowed hard before he said in a more measured tone. "I always knew I was a damn fool to expect so much from you, Haldane. Men'll say all kinds of things in war that they don't keep to once they're back home, and why should you be any different? And you kept telling me that I held you up too high, and you weren't as good a man as all that. Shoulda believed you."</p><p>Andy couldn't stand the heat of Jones' anger for a second more. He held up his hands to ward it off, and blurted, "I don't remember what I told you!"</p><p>Jones blinked. "What?"</p><p>"That head injury," Andy tried to explain, but his words were all tangled, like they'd been when he'd first woken up and wondered why he was in a military hospital in California, and not in Methuen, Massachusetts. "I'm sorry, Mr. Jones, I don't remember what I promised, or where you were, or any of that. The whole... the whole thing is just gone."</p><p>"The whole thing?" Jones sucked in a breath, and tried to back away further, but there was nowhere to go. "You mean the war?"</p><p>Andy nodded, glad that Jones had made some sense out of his jumbled words. "The last three years are pretty well blank. I'm sorry."</p><p>"Oh, God." Even in the dim light of the laundry room, Andy could see the blood leave Jones' face. His cheeks had been hectic with colour, but now they were as grey as the cement floor. He stretched out an arm to brace on the wall, but still looked like he might sink to his ass on the floor at any second. "Oh. God."</p><p>There wasn't any pretty way to paint that, so Andy stayed where he was and waited for Jones to pull himself together. Andy'd once had to tell one of the boys on his team that his father had died in a car crash, and the poor kid had looked about the same as Jones did now. Then, Andy had been able to offer what support an embrace might lend. Now, he doubted the welcome that kind of familiarity would find. He wished that someone were there to comfort Jones, or that he himself could presume to. Again, Andy thought of those Western Union telegrams, and wished there'd been a better way to do this.</p><p>Jones rubbed his hand over his mouth, blinked hard, and then looked up at Andy. His gaze was steady and dry-eyed, and Andy had to wonder how many shocks Jones had absorbed in his lifetime. "Thank you"—Jones' voice was so rough that he had to clear his throat—"for coming down to tell me to my face. Can't have been easy."</p><p>It hadn't been, but Andy still felt as though he owed Jones something more, if only he could figure out what. "I read your letters," Andy said, groping forward. "Seemed like we were pretty close, over there. Seemed like I owed you. I'm sorry I didn't answer sooner."</p><p>Jones was holding himself utterly still, and he nodded carefully, almost with the deliberation of someone very drunk or very tired. "I appreciate it," he said. He paused after that, as lost as Andy for what to say. He glanced down at his hands, and Andy followed his gaze, seeing streaks of white paint, and the rough, cracked skin of someone who'd laboured his whole life. "Are you hungry?" Jones asked finally. "I can fix you something."</p><p>Andy had eaten on the train, but didn't want to leave yet. He knew he was imposing and that what Jones probably wanted most just then was a chance to pull back and nurse his wounds, but at the same time couldn't tear himself away. The intensity of Jones' attention on him pulled at Andy like a swift current, and he couldn't seem to find the will to swim for shore. "I could eat," he said, "If it's no trouble, Captain Jones."</p><p>"Call me that one more goddamn time..." Jones sucked in a breath, held it, and let it out in a long sigh. "You used to call me Eddie," he said more evenly. "I'd prefer if you kept to that. And making a sandwich is no trouble."</p><p>"Okay," Andy said, but couldn't bring himself to speak with a familiarity he didn't feel he'd earned. He waited while Jones scrubbed the paint off his hands, then followed him into a dim kitchen, and sat when Jones pointed at the table. He watched as Jones rustled through the cupboards and ice box, slathering mustard and butter on thick slices of home-baked bread, not bothering to ask Andy what he liked. "You said you were on leave?" he asked, feeling that was a safe topic.</p><p>Jones nodded without looking up from the counter. "That's right. Until two weeks from Friday. First proper furlough since Melbourne, if you don't count Banika." He turned, a smile tugging at his lips, but when Andy only smiled politely, not understanding the reference, Jones turned away again.</p><p>"And after that?" Andy asked, trying to move the conversation forward as smoothly as he could. He'd gotten far too good at covering the awkwardness everyone felt around him, once they knew. "Will you go back to the Pacific?"</p><p>Jones' shoulders heaved in a sigh, and Andy gathered that the question hadn't been in the realm of polite conversation. He'd never had such a profound sensation of walking on eggshells. "No," Jones admitted, the word dragged out of him. "I ain't going back. I did my three landings, five if you count the little hops, and even the Corps knows it can't ask no more of a man than that. They ain't sent my orders yet, but I'll have something at Parris Island, like as not."</p><p>"Oh," Andy said. He didn't know what that meant, but had some notion of a place in the Carolinas. "Have you been all right? Your first letter said you'd been wounded."</p><p>Instead of answering, Jones slammed the plate in front of Andy and turned to fetch him a glass of water from the tap. He didn't move cautiously or haltingly like most of the men in the military hospital had, so Andy supposed his wound must have healed. His first letter had talked about it like Andy would have known what he meant, and he'd been sparse on details after that, only saying he was recovering. It was likely another significant moment that Andy no longer remembered. He wanted to apologise, but he had a feeling that if he did that one more time, Jones would start apologising to Andy, and he didn't think either of them would be able to bear that.</p><p>Staying had been a mistake. Andy's earlier instinct had been correct: his continued presence was simply rubbing salt in a wound he'd created. Worse, he knew that mentioning it, apologising, or leaving in a rush would only cause more grief. His acceptance of food had trapped them both in this painfully cordial dance that would last another half hour at least, like something out of a novel about high society in the Gilded Age.</p><p>Setting the water down, Jones slumped into the chair opposite Andy, arms flat on the table and fingers laced together. He watched Andy eat and said nothing.</p><p>"This is good, thank you," Andy said before the silence drowned him. He took a sip of mineral-flavoured water, and made himself meet Jones' searching expression.</p><p>Jones ignored Andy's gratitude, and kept looking at him, as if he were trying to memorise his face. This was, Andy supposed, the last time they would see each other, the last chance for Jones to say goodbye to his friend. He found he regretted that immensely, but didn't know what to do about it.</p><p>"Jesus, Andy," Jones moaned. His knuckles whitened and his jaw clenched, and Andy watched him try to pull himself back together, then fail, demanding, "Are you okay? I mean..." he shook his head. "You're going to be all right, ain't you?"</p><p>Andy was glad he'd just taken a bite, because chewing and swallowing gave him time to think of what to say. "Of course," he answered. "I'll be fine."</p><p>Jones' shoulders shook as he heaved in a breath, but he nodded in acceptance. "That's what I prayed for," he said, finally, utterly defeated, "so I guess a man can't expect more than that."</p><p>He'd mentioned praying for Andy in his letters, and Andy knew it was no little thing for him. "Thank you."</p><p>"You..." Jones shook his head and gave up, getting up and pacing to the window. He pulled a box of smokes out of his pocket and tapped one out, getting all the way to putting it to his lips and searching his pockets for a light before he stopped himself and replaced it in the pack. "Ma don't stand for smoking in her kitchen," he muttered.</p><p>Andy had been wolfing down the sandwich at speed, and now tipped back the rest of the water to wash it down. "I suppose I'll be going then," he said, pushing to his feet. The chair scraped back with a sound to shatter glass, and they both winced.</p><p>Jones braced his hands on the edge of the counter and leaned forward, his back a curve of surrender, then made an effort to stand straight and turn to face Andy. Andy could see the Marine Corps steel bracing his spine as he did, and hated that Jones had to fall back on military habits to look at a friend. "Thank you for coming down. I appreciate it," he said again, then grimaced at the repetition.</p><p>"Of course." Andy started to walk past Jones towards the front door, but Jones twisted sideways and skirted ahead of Andy.</p><p>"Look," Jones said, "let me walk you back to the station."</p><p>There was no reason to make the offer save to drag out an already painful farewell, but Andy nodded and followed Jones out the door. They fell into step beside each other, taking up the sidewalk.</p><p>"Will you make it back tonight?" Jones asked, and Andy shrugged.</p><p>"Get in pretty late," he admitted.</p><p>"You can,"—Jones cleared his throat and fell a little behind, scuffing his feet on the cement—"if you like, it'd be no trouble to put you up and that."</p><p>"I don't know if that's a good idea." Andy could tell that every second he was here, he was causing Jones pain, and he didn't want that. More than anything, he wanted to escape back to the warm embrace of his parents' house, to fall back into the directionless oblivion in which he'd drifted for the past months. It was, he knew, the furthest thing from the man he'd been before, both at war and before at school, but all of the alternatives seemed insurmountably difficult.</p><p>"Of course," Jones said, again resigned and miserable. "You ain't got your kit with you anyhow."</p><p>The schedule said they had a twenty minute wait on the platform before the train passed through on the way back to Philly, and Andy settled on the single bench. Jones dropped down beside him. This time, he lit the smoke, but didn't bother offering one to Andy. Aside from the stationmaster reading a newspaper a few hundred yards away, they were the only people there.</p><p>They sat silently for several minutes before Jones said out of the blue, "Is it stupid to wish we could start again?"</p><p>"How's that?"</p><p>"We had something good, is all," Jones said, fumbling to explain. He wasn't looking at Andy, but straight ahead at the tracks, or through the tracks to a faraway island in the Pacific. "You were the best friend I ever had. Seems like a damn shame to just call it over and done."</p><p>Andy had to admit that he was curious to know what kind of man would inspire a bond above and beyond the friendships he'd made in school. Was it just the stress of combat and a shared military experience? Or was there some inherent quality in their personalities that had linked them, that could perhaps be recaptured? Given time, surely they could learn eachother again. Was it not a waste not even to try?</p><p>"Seems to me it wouldn't be fair," Andy said. He kept looking at Jones, but Jones wouldn't meet his eyes. "Not to either of us. I think I'd wind up disappointing you, no matter what I tried."</p><p>Jones dipped his head in acknowledgement, the movement shaking ash loose from his cigarette. "Suppose," he muttered, but didn't sound convinced. "Maybe I just can't believe it."</p><p>At first Andy'd bristled when people had implied he was making up the amnesia story, maybe even malingering, but as he had time to think he'd come to understand that no one meant to call him a liar. Despite the sensationalised stories of wandering, shell-shocked doughboys from the last war, and a good number of Victorian novels, the idea of forgetting entire years did seem incredible.</p><p>"The docs think it all might come back, eventually," Andy offered, "or parts of it, but so far..." He shook his head.</p><p>He didn't tell Jones what the head shrinker his father had hired had said. He'd gone on about a bunch of guff about the id and the subconscious, but his conclusion had been that Andy didn't <em>want</em> to remember, that his amnesia was protecting him from something too difficult to handle. It was from that session that Andy had learned that, on top of everything else, he was weak. The doctor had offered to help him recover the memories, but he hadn't gone back. Now, he didn't want to tell Jones that Andy had likely forgotten him on purpose. It seemed too cruel.</p><p>"Don't you want to know?" Jones demanded, finally looking at Andy. Out of the corner of his vision, Andy could see that his eyes were wide with incredulity.</p><p>"Maybe. I don't know," Andy admitted, the first time he'd done so aloud, but he owed Jones the truth.</p><p>Jones twisted his hands together, holding something back, until finally he admitted, "Give me the choice, and I don't know if I'd remember that last month, either."</p><p>"Funny, Everett Pope said that almost word for word."</p><p>"You saw Major Pope?" Jones asked, tone accusing. He stopped smoking and let the cigarette dangle from his fingers, trailing ash onto the ground.</p><p>Andy shrugged. "He came by. It's what made me come down here, actually."</p><p>"Huh." When Jones didn't elaborate, Andy cast him a studied sidelong look, which made Jones shrug and admit, "Never thought he cared all that much for me, is all. Didn't approve."</p><p>That slotted with Everett's closed comment about Andy keeping to his own men, and made Andy wonder what the rest of the story might be. Not all of his friends always got along with each other, but he couldn't see how Everett and Jones would clash. They might come from different backgrounds, but they were cut out of roughly the same cloth, so far as Andy could tell.</p><p>"I reckon from that look on your face, you can't stand not knowing," Jones said, leaning in so close that Andy could smell the stale cigarettes on his breath.</p><p>Andy didn't think that was a statement so much as a dare. Jones wanted to remind Andy that the Captain Ack-Ack Haldane he'd known had never been afraid of a thing in his career, and that this new Andy had a hell of a pair of shoes to fill. As if Andy didn't know that, hadn't read his own commendations and shaken his head in wonder at them.</p><p>Fear coiled in Andy's gut, but also exhilaration, like when he saw a linebacker crashing towards him, and the angles running through his mind told him he was going to get pummelled, and that it was going to hurt like hell, but maybe he'd gain another yard of field before he went down.</p><p>"Yeah," he said. "Yeah, I want to know."</p><p>Jones's head dropped forward, and he huffed out a sharp breath. Andy couldn't tell if it was relief, or nerving himself up for something. Maybe it was both, because when he turned to look up at Andy, a feverish gleam lit his eyes. He took a long, last drag of the smoke before grinding it out and saying: "Skip, we fought together, went on liberty together, and even racked together, all the way from the Canal to Peleliu; there isn't a damn thing you could ask about that I wouldn't have an answer for."</p><p>Andy wavered. He knew that Jones was selling himself based on his knowledge because his earlier appeal to lost friendship had failed to lure Andy in, but Jones' goals hadn't changed. He still wanted to hold onto Andy long enough to figure out a way to keep him, and Andy thought Jones was still setting himself up for an even worse heartbreak. Was satisfying his curiosity worth hurting a good man, even if that man was offering himself up, wide awake to the pain that would inevitably come?</p><p>Jones pressed forwards. "Come away with me!" he said. "Listen, we don't neither of us have to be anywhere the next few days, do we? Let's take some time, go somewhere together, sort it all out."</p><p>"Where would we go?" Andy asked. He wasn't used to being the one to follow, but Jones' words were hard to resist.</p><p>Jones shook his head, as if that were the last thing in the world that mattered. "Wherever you like," he said, but seeming to understand that he had to take the initiative, added, "I used to fish brook trout with Pa. There's a little place just over the border in West Virginia, quite as you please, and God's own country."</p><p>Andy moaned softly, like he'd just been given ice cream on a hot day. Suddenly, that was all he wanted: to be out and away from all the stifling expectations of his parents, of his friends, of people who kept asking him when he'd contact Bowdoin about that job. He wanted to move again. Jones had his own hopes for Andy, but oddly it felt as if there were fewer conditions on anything Jones might ask of him. Mostly, he seemed to want to talk so that Andy would listen, and Andy wanted to listen.</p><p>"I'll need to telegram my parents," Andy said.</p><p>Jones nodded, a little too eager. "I can arrange that, and I'll have to shake up the gear, trade for gas rations, and find you something to wear."</p><p>Already, Andy felt guilt pulling at him, but he didn't put a stop to all this.</p><p>As they got up to walk back to Jones' house, the train pulled into the station, unheeded.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Ninety minutes later, they were driving southwest into the hills, Jones assured behind the wheel, Andy hanging his arm out the window and wearing an extra pair of Jones' boots. He called them boondockers, words Andy recognised from letters, but which rolled off Jones' tongue with the familiarity of long use.</p><p>Jones kept his eyes on the road, the flurry of organisation and activity having faded to pensiveness. Andy had to wonder if Jones was having second thoughts, or if he was just trying to work out how to hold onto Andy now that he had him.</p><p>To break the silence, Andy commented, "Your mom sure seemed happy to see me."</p><p>It was an understatement, if anything. Jones' mother had hugged Andy and soaked his shirt with tears when she'd met him. She was a tall, hatchet-faced woman with ten year's worth of extra lines around her eyes and mouth, and the same curly hair as Jones, springing free of her braid into a halo. Andy, for his part, had patted her back gingerly and wished he knew why he was being wept on. It wasn't the first time he felt as though an image of him had been built up that he couldn't hope to represent. Jones'd shot him a look that made it very clear that Andy was to leave his memory loss out of any story he might tell, and Andy'd nodded slightly, and let Mrs. Jones squeeze the life out of him.</p><p>"She knows what I owe you," Jones answered, but didn't explain.</p><p>If this trip was so that Andy could get answers, he hoped Jones planned to be more forthcoming in the future. "And what's that?"</p><p>Jones shrugged, still focusing on the road as he slowed into a turn. "My commission. My life. My goddamn mind. Prolly not in that order."</p><p>"Oh," Andy said, taken aback by Jones' sudden frankness.</p><p>"There ain't nothing I don't owe you, Andy," Jones added, something in him sprung loose by Andy's question.</p><p>"Will you tell me, then?" Andy asked.</p><p>"Hardly know where to start," Jones admitted. The car wound higher into the hills, the road narrowing as the evening sun turned the bright new leaves of spring to gold. Andy couldn't tell if Jones was blinking against the light, or trying to press back tears.</p><p>"How did we meet?" Andy suggested gently. "Were we in the same company?"</p><p>Jones glanced at him sharply, teeth flashing in a surprised grimace, as though that were the oddest question in the world. But he didn't call Andy stupid for asking it, just started to explain that they'd been in different companies, but that the encampment had been the same, and that Jones had liked the look of Andy from the start.</p><p>As they drove through the sunset to the dusk, Jones kept talking, explaining as he went the trials and adventures he and Andy'd had over those four months on Guadalcanal. It tracked with Andy's own letters, but those hadn't mentioned the bugs or losing half his squad to malaria. He hadn't mentioned the disfigured bodies or the way everything rotted in the heat. He hadn't mentioned how scared they'd all been, or how bored sometimes. Andy had known that he'd made the best of it for his parents, but he hadn't realised to what extent.</p><p>Once he was started, Jones spoke plainly but vividly of life in the Marine Corps, and Andy hung on every word, not quite able to believe these stories were about him. There was something almost hypnotic about Jones' voice though, and by the time they reached the little side road next to the fishing spot, Andy had started to nod off.</p><p>"Christ," Jones muttered as he pulled off the road on what could generously be called a track. The car's headlights caught in the long grass growing up down the middle of the path, but the gravel crunched evenly under the tires. "Been a spell since I've been down this way."</p><p>"You came here with your old man?" Andy asked. A Mr. Jones had been absent from the house and unmentioned, and Andy hadn't wanted to ask.</p><p>"'Fore he up and run off," Jones agreed, not sounding too put out about it, "then took the boys sometimes, when I could get a liberty stateside, but not since the war. Lucky it's still here."</p><p>Andy thought the luck was mostly held by Jones' brothers, who had someone like Jones who'd travel around the world just to take them fishing, but didn't feel like that was his place to say. He wondered if he had before.</p><p>A few low-hanging branches dragged across the windscreen, before the car pulled into a clearing. Jones pulled to one side, and left the lights on long enough to unpack the tent. He tossed Andy part of it like he expected him to know what to do with it, and then took it back in exasperation when Andy unfolded the canvas and stared at it. In minutes, Jones had a small tent set up, and seemed to trust Andy to deal with the bedrolls and sleeping bags. He turned the battery off, and crawled into the tent, which, Andy felt, was more a piece of canvas suspended across a string above another piece of canvas. Jones called both parts "halves," another word used as though it had more meaning than it did to Andy.</p><p>At least the night was warm, and the sleeping bags were thick. Andy fumbled to take his borrowed boots off in the dark, while beside him Jones stripped out of his jacket. Neither said a word as fabric rustled, and the calls of night birds filled the dark.</p><p>It was only when Andy was lying on his back in the dark, next to a virtual stranger, that he wondered what the hell he was doing. Just that morning, he'd been tucked in the safe familiarity of his father's house, now he could barely say what state he was in, and all on an impulse to chase the truth, whatever that might be. As if that were even possible.</p><p>Seeming to sense the pregnant emotion growing in the silence, Jones said, "Get some sleep, Skipper. The fish get up early."</p><p>Andy had seen a pair of bamboo rods loaded into the back of the car, along with the slim case of a light-calibre rifle, and untold odds and ends. Jones, it seemed, did not camp light unless he had to.</p><p>"What's the gun for?" Andy asked.</p><p>Jones snorted at some unknown joke, but just said, "Turkey if we're lucky enough to see a tom. Possum, maybe."</p><p>"Yeah?" Andy had never considered that possums might be eaten, but he supposed there was no reason they shouldn't be.</p><p>"Too late for cottontails," Jones added, voice getting drowsier by the moment. "They'll be starting on kits by now."</p><p>Jones seemed to fall asleep after that, lying on his back with his hands folded over his chest, a mirror of Andy's posture, not quite close enough that their elbows touched.</p><p>Despite the fatigue following two restless nights and a busy day, Andy couldn't seem to get comfortable. The ground was hard under him, and he didn't like the way the bushes around them kept rustling. His father had never been one to take his children camping, and Andy had always chosen sports over scouting. He wondered if there were panthers or bears in these woods still, like in Davy Crockett stories, but concluded that Jones wouldn't have parked them somewhere dangerous, unless the place had changed in the years since he'd been here.</p><p>Andy didn't remember drifting off, just that at some point the sound of the wind in the trees and Jones' steady breathing faded into uneasy dreams.</p>
<hr/><p>Andy woke in the dark, knowing something was wrong, but not what. He stared up into the pitch black and tried to wrap his brain around where he was, and why the bed underneath him was so hard, but his mind was hazy with an unremembered dream, and nothing quite made sense.</p><p>He reached up, and his hand hit canvas, and he remembered: the tent, Jones, fishing.</p><p>Beside him, he could sense more than feel Jones sitting bolt upright. The sound that had woken Andy was his hash panting. As he lay still, listening, Andy could hear Jones' teeth chattering, though if anything the tent was close and too warm.</p><p>Andy rolled onto his side and wriggled back to give Jones more. He couldn't tell if Jones was awake or caught in some kind of night terror. Either way, he didn't seem to notice that Andy was moving about, even though they had mere inches between them.</p><p>"Jones," he said, voice a harsh whisper, and when Jones didn't respond to that, "Come on, Eddie, wake up."</p><p>Jones flinched, his whole body crackling with tension. "'M awake," he growled, and Andy was glad he'd already made more space between them. "Goddamn fucking..." he trailed off before he could say anything, then slumped forward. "Dammit," he murmured, the edge of a sob in his voice.</p><p>"Eddie?" Andy asked carefully. He wanted to reach out, but didn't think it would be welcome.</p><p>"Just..." Jones broke off, and the sleeping bag rustled again. His voice had been shaking on even that single word. A moment later, Jones was crawling free of the tent. "I need a minute. Lemme be."</p><p>"Okay," Andy said, because he couldn't think of anything else to say. He'd spent too much time feeling helpless and alone since he'd woken up, but never so much as now. He listened as the long grass rustled and Jones' lighter flicked, and thought he should go out and try to say something to Jones. Whatever had struck him in the night had shaken him badly, and Andy should be able to provide companionship if not comfort. He thought that Ack-Ack would have crawled out after Jones and wrapped him in a blanket, instead of lying there useless and unsure.</p><p>Andy didn't move. This was, he knew, what true cowardice looked like, but he couldn't seem to help it. The intensity of Jones' emotion was so far from anything Andy had experienced since waking up. Even without being able to see him, Andy could picture Eddie sitting just outside the tent, his long legs pulled up against his chest, body shaking with anger and grief brought to the surface by the nightmare. The cherry of the cigarette would make his eyes gleam in the dark, but show little else.</p><p>The image of that hovered behind Andy's eyes for a long time, but, eventually, he slept.</p>
<hr/><p>Andy got his first look at their camping place as the sunrise cut through the trees. The tent sat at the middle of a clearing maybe three times the length of the car and half that wide. A narrow path led off downhill, while thick underbrush and tall maples surrounded them.</p><p>Jones was nowhere in sight, but the car hadn't moved, so Andy supposed he was around somewhere.</p><p>Andy crawled out of the tent and started to stretch out cold, cramped muscles. He supposed Ack-Ack had gotten used to sleeping rough, but his body didn't seem to remember it any more than his mind did. He hadn't slept in his clothes in a long time either, and thought he could use a wash. Given the purpose of the trip, Andy guessed there was a creek or something down the path, and was just considering going to find it and at least splash the sleep out of his eyes when the bushes rustled.</p><p>Hackles rising, Andy dropped into a crouch and glanced around for cover, thinking again of the possibilities of bears. He'd taken a step towards the car when Jones pushed through the brush into the clearing, his arms full of fallen wood.</p><p>Andy straightened, trying not to think of how silly he must have looked, but he still felt the adrenaline coursing through his veins, out of proportion with what just happened. He took a deep breath to steady himself, and forced a smile. "Morning."</p><p>Jones nodded in acknowledgement and dumped the wood on top of a pile Andy hadn't even noticed. There was a circle of stones nearby, though it had enough weeds growing through it that even Andy could tell this place hadn't been used in a while.</p><p>"Are you"—Andy cleared his throat, but decided there was no point dodging around it—"okay?"</p><p>That got him a snort of the obviousness of the question and its redundancy, but when Andy folded his arms defensively, Jones' expression softened, and he said, "Sorry 'bout that. I been better lately, leastwise, I thought..." Instead of finishing, Jones dropped to a crouch next to the fire ring, and started pulling weeds away from it.</p><p>Wanting to be helpful, Andy knelt across from him. The course grasses dragged at his hands, and he wished he had gloves. Months of idleness had smoothed the callouses he'd woken up with to almost nothing.</p><p>Jones smiled at Andy and kept working. His cheeks were pink and freshly shaved, like always. After a few moments of silence, he said, "I reckon it was telling you about the Canal that done it."</p><p>"Oh?" Andy asked.</p><p>"Ain't said much about it to anyone, least not about the bad parts." Jones started reaching for stems of dried grass, crumbling them into a mare's nest at the centre of the circle. His hands moved out of habit, seemingly unconnected to the weight of his words. Andy, for his part, had stilled, and he watched Jones continue to fuss with laying the fire.</p><p>"I'm sorry," Andy said. He'd known that his investigation was going to hurt Jones, but he clearly hadn't thought through all of the consequences of dredging the war up again. "You don't have to tell me any more about it, if you don't want to."</p><p>Jones looked up sharply, the sun through the trees catching his eyes and making them bluer than the sky. "Andy, if you asked me to, I'd go back to die on those damn islands. Talking ain't no thing."</p><p>"I wouldn't ask that of anyone," Andy replied, but Jones' eyes stayed steady on his, and now he had to wonder. Jones' expression told him that he would have asked exactly that, no, would have expected it. "You've seen enough combat," he said, but he knew the words were hollow even as he said them, that they were like the mummery show he'd put on in the letters to "his" boys: an opinion he thought Ack-Ack would hold, not something real.</p><p>Jones shook his head, dismissing Andy's condescension. "I wondered, you know, if that was why you didn't answer my letters." He looked away after he said that, turning to pick up larger branches to build into a sort of square fort around his stack of tinder. Andy saw a tinge of colour in his ears. He had not, Andy believed, meant to admit so much.</p><p>"That wasn't why," was all Andy could say, but he wished he could promise Jones that he would never have cut off a man for failing to die for his country. He wished he could be sure that wasn't the man the war had turned him into.</p><p>"I know that," Jones replied. He pulled out his lighter, and the flames burst through the tinder to the wood, creating a cheerful blaze in moments.</p><p>"You're very good at that," Andy told him, glad for a chance to change the subject.</p><p>"Helps that the wood's dry," Jones said, and Andy wished he could read the look that followed when all Andy did was hum in agreement.</p><p>Andy felt like Jones was laying traps for him, or perhaps that was too harsh; it was more that Jones was playing his part, and kept expecting Andy to come in. He was leaving space in his melody, and Andy was giving him was silence: a bandmate who'd fallen asleep at the keys.</p><p>The sting of that look drove Andy into silence while Jones built the fire to make a bed of coals, and put a kettle next to it to heat stream water. "I don't go in for anything fancy when I'm out here," he said.</p><p>"Do you expect me to want fancy?" Andy asked, genuinely curious.</p><p>That got him another measured look, another story that, for all his promises, Jones hadn't told him, a joke Andy could never be in on. "It was a game, is all," Jones said finally, once he pulled his thoughts together. "On the Canal, when we didn't have no food, you'd say, 'Boys, welcome to breakfast at the Ritz,' and then you'd talk about how we were really eating all this fancy nonsense, and the fellows would laugh and pretend to forget they were eating maggoty rice."</p><p>Andy glanced down at the kettle as the flames licked up the sides of the scorched iron. Then he turned sharply to Jones and demanded, "We aren't eating maggoty rice are we?"</p><p>Jones' face ticked, falling still for a moment, then he smiled, a flash of surprised delight changing his face, maybe his whole body, easing the tension out of him and dropping the years away. "Naw, just oatmeal and coffee. Hard to get the right kinda maggots stateside."</p><p>Andy almost said something about things a man didn't think he'd miss, but it seemed in bad taste to even pretend to be nostalgic about a world he only understood via hearsay. "Coffee and oatmeal sounds wonderful," he said instead, and watched as Jones' face fell again. That hadn't been right either, but Andy didn't think anything he said could have been. He didn't even know what key he was supposed to be in, let alone the tune.</p><p>With Jones focusing more care on his fire than could really be needed, Andy stood and went back to trying to stretch out his muscles. This, at least, felt familiar, the old football callisthenics ingrained in his nerves to the point where he could move without thought. It felt good to use his body again. He'd spent too many months in hospitals, and more months still with his parents convinced he'd shatter if he so much as went outside the house. If he was going to be back in good enough shape to be of any use, he needed to shake loose of his hesitation. Maybe this trip would be his fresh start. He'd hear Jones' stories, and reconcile with the gap in his memories, and then go forward from there. After all, he couldn't just moulder away for the rest of his life.</p><p>It would be good for Jones, too. He could say goodbye to the man he'd known, and go back to his military life. He'd been a career Marine, he'd said, and Andy imagined that he'd stick with that. A day or two of this, and Jones would understand that they did need to start over, but not as friends, not in the way he'd meant at the train station. It was 1945, and the war would be over soon. They had a whole new world stretching out in front of them.</p><p>When Andy straightened and gave his shoulders a final roll, he found that Jones was watching him, and he didn't look like he was thinking of giving anything up. He was staring at Andy with lips parted, and a soft, misty look in his eyes, as though he'd seen Andy do these exercises a hundred times before, and might think the whole thing a little silly, but was long past saying so. It was the look Andy's father gave his mother when she left a little dish of sugar out on the counter, or some other tradition from a world away.</p><p>Jones' noticed Andy's gaze and looked down, shaking his head. "Chow's up."</p><p>"Thank you for cooking," Andy said as he settled down across the flames from Jones. It really was just oatmeal with a dash of brown sugar, and black coffee, but Andy found it fit their rustic setting, and wolfed it down so fast he burned his mouth.</p><p>"Let's go catch some fish," Jones said when he finished, standing abruptly.</p><p>Andy followed, taking the stacked dishes with them towards the creek. "I did tell you I had no clue what I was doing, didn't I?"</p><p>"Always said I'd teach you, didn't I?" Jones replied, and this time didn't correct himself.</p><p>A dozen yards below the clearing, the path opened up to a gravelled stream bank. The sun was just starting to fall on the water, rays streaming through the tree branches, and catching little clouds of insects hovering above the sparkling surface. They were far enough away from the road that all Andy could hear was the rustle of the breeze in the new leaves and the chuckle of the stream as it dropped over a series of short cascades upstream and rippled along its banks below them. Song birds twittered among the bushes, not frightened by the crunch of their boots on gravel. They stood on the edge of a shadowed pond, with water green as an emerald and so clear that Andy could have counted the rocks along the bottom.</p><p>He looked sideways at Jones, and saw him standing in utter stillness staring out at the place, his hands hanging loose by his sides with the bamboo rods trailing from his grip. The sun caught his hair, lighting the brown to brass, and put colour in his cheeks. He was staring out across the water, but Andy didn't think he was seeing it, at least not as it was here and now. Jones was seeing every trip out here with his father and brothers, how the stream had looked the same and how it had changed as the decades had flowed past, and Jones had grown from boy to man to Marine. He was seeing an old world with new eyes, and finding his place in it. He looked haunted, but at peace.</p><p>A fish the size of Andy's hand broke the surface of the water, trailing a rainbowed arc of droplets behind it. Andy thought he saw it snap something out of the air, but couldn't tell. It fell back into the pond with a small splash, barely louder than the fall of the water, but enough sound to shake Jones loose from his meditations.</p><p>"It's gonna be a good day," Jones said, with the confidence of a prophet.</p><p>"I hope so," Andy agreed, and they got to the business of fishing.</p><p>Andy had had a vague notion of putting a worm on a hook, and dropping the whole thing in the water until something ate it, but he quickly gathered this was a different sort of endeavour entirely. Jones had a case of jewel bright lures, each crafted with so much care that their hair and feathers had the delicacy of the insect wings they mimicked. Jones trailed his fingertips above them, naming each: a litany with the beat of poetry to it.</p><p>"The trick of it is to convince the fish that you're just another bug sitting on the water, the fattest juiciest bug of 'em all," Jones explained, selecting a construction of black and green and twisting it onto the end of the line with a series of knots too small and quick for Andy to follow. A sharp steel hook gleamed from the fly's belly.</p><p>"We're outsmarting fish, got it," Andy said, and watched as Jones stood and contemplated the stream again before flicking the tip of his rod out over the water. The line was almost too fine to see, only catching now and then as a glimmer in the sunlight, but Andy could follow the fly, a dark spot dancing over the surface of the water, back and forth seemingly unconnected to the sway of Jones' body as he manoeuvred the line. He moved as if he and the bamboo pole were one and the same, and everything from the soles of his boots to the tilt of his head flowed into the expanding line across the water. Beautiful wasn't a word meant for men, but Andy couldn't think of anything else to describe it, and something caught in his chest and knotted tight.</p><p>At last, the fly touched the surface of the water, and then vanished altogether, and Jones' body changed. He pulled in the line with his left hand, and flicked the rod back reeled in, hands a blur. Andy hadn't even seen what happened, but the still surface thrashed, and then Andy saw a gleam of silvery brown. Jones tipped his head to one side, and Andy understood he was meant to get the small net. He scooped the fish out of the water, and Jones took it by the tail, striking it against a stone once, then twice, until its thrashing became the limp twitches of something that hasn't realised it was dead.</p><p>Andy went over to crouch next to Jones, who was meticulously unhooking his now-bedraggled fly from the fish's mouth. Andy's vision skidded away from how one of the fish's eyes had been flattened by the blow, its perfect body distorted in death. If Jones noticed, he didn't say anything, merely commented that it wasn't every day you caught a fish on the first cast. "A few more this big, and we'll have a decent supper," he said, and undid the fly to tie a fresh one. "You try that hare's ear there, no, furry, copper wire, that's it. That one'll sink down, and the fish'll think it's a little swimming critter, just hatched. Now, look how I'm doing this."</p><p>Jones slowed the motions of his fingers until Andy could copy the knots to bind the twist of wool, wire and hair to the end of his line. He was pretty sure that whatever he did, it wasn't going to look remotely like Jones' elegance. At last he had the lure on, and stood, holding the rod uncertainly. He heard Jones sigh faintly, then he was standing behind Andy and reaching around him to correct the position of his hands.</p><p>They stood so close that Jones' chest pressed against Andy's back, and when he spoke, his breath was warm in Andy's ear. He was talking about how a man had to move with the steadiness of a song, and moving the rod only so far, trying to guide Andy's arms into the rhythm of it, but Andy felt stiff and awkward inside this strange embrace. There was a familiarity to it, but he couldn't put his finger on whatever it was; it certainly wasn't that he had the least idea what he was doing.</p><p>"You're leaning into it too hard, Skip," Jones told him, tightening his arms around Andy's body to smooth his jolting efforts. "Here, lemme show you, now, you just follow what I do. It's alright, Andy, just relax, let me. There we are, see?" His words flowed over Andy who finally relaxed into his hold and let his limbs be guided as Jones mimed casting the line out over the water, and floating it back and forth over the surface. Like before, it wasn't just a jerk of his arms and shoulders, but his body and therefore Andy's rocking back and forth to the beat of a slow march. "Yeah, that's right," Jones crooned, and Andy felt the warmth of pride fill him along with the high sun of mid morning, and the heat soaking into his back from Jones' chest. He felt half asleep, drifting in a sun-dappled dream world as Jones rocked their bodies.</p><p>Andy wasn't ready for Jones to drop his hold from Andy's arms and step away, saying with a shattering briskness, "All right, that's well enough. You have a try now."</p><p>"Why do you keep calling me 'Skip,'?" Andy asked as he tried to recall the movements in his own dumbshow of fishing.</p><p>"Oh, uh." Jones was still standing behind him so that Andy couldn't see his expression, but the chagrin was clear in his voice. "Skip. It's short for Skipper. A man doesn't want to go around sirring and saluting when there might be snipers, so we all just called you Skip or Ack-Ack in the field. Guess I'm still used to it. Sorry."</p><p>Andy bit his lip and focused on the swish of bamboo against the still air. "I don't mind what you call me," he said, finally. "I just might not answer to it, is all."</p><p>Jones didn't say anything to that, so Andy just kept rocking back and forth on his own, line still on the reel and frankly starting to feel a bit silly about the whole thing.</p><p>Finally, Jones cleared his throat and said, "Okay, you might as well try with some line on it. Pull out enough so the fly'll get about to the middle of the pond, and just hold it in a coil your left hand. You have to feed the line out as you flip the rod back and, ah, fuck. Okay. We'll keep at this."</p><p>Andy had gotten tangled in both the instructions and the line, and somehow sent the lure thwap into the gravel a yard from his boots. He would have thought that failing so badly in front of Jones would have stung, but instead of the bite of humiliation Andy found himself laughing at his own awkwardness.</p><p>He sorted out the line and again started to sway the rod back and forth like he was sending line out onto the water. "Can you show me again, Jones?" he asked, only belatedly remembering that he was supposed to be calling him by his Christian name.</p><p>"Okay," Jones said, and stepped in again, but this time he didn't hold Andy close, instead standing a little to one side so that he could put one hand on Andy's shoulder and another on his forearm. It worked as well as anything, and Andy concentrated on the movements Jones was showing him, not on the missing sensation of having someone so close. When he thought he had it, Jones stepped back and this time Andy managed to cast the little twist of copper and wool out into the middle of the pond, where it landed with a plop, and immediately sank. "You want to tug on the line with your left hand, just a little at a time," Jones said. "Make it look like the critter's got some life in it."</p><p>Andy gave it a try, but by the time the lure was trailing limply through the shallows, it was still without a fish on the hook. "You make this look easy," Andy said, turning to smile at Jones.</p><p>Jones grinned back. "Give it another twenty years, or so, Skip, and you'll have it down."</p><p>"Maybe I will at that," Andy said. He hadn't been thinking of more than how pleasant it felt to stand outside on a bright spring morning, keeping good company and trying to learn something new, but when he took a moment to think about it, he liked the idea of coming back to this stream every year, like Jones and his father had, watching the seasons change and marking time by laugh lines on his friend's face.</p><p>It was a nice image, much more comforting than the thought of all the added worry lines and scars that the rest of his friends had gained in the past three years. None of the new lines on Everett Pope's face had been added by laughter. What about Jones? Andy finished tidying up his fishing line and turned to him, studying his face. They were the same age, one of the letters had mentioned a birthday in April, but he didn't look twenty-eight any more than Andy did. Crows feet had crept into the corners of his eyes, emphasised by his squint against the sun, maybe a trace of grey in with the buzz-cut hair around his ears, though nothing against Andy's hair, which aged his appearance a good decade.</p><p>Jones shaded his eyes, taking Andy in, then looking further up the creek. "How about I start up here, and you keep at it where you are." He didn't really make it a question, but he still waited for Andy's shrug before picking up his rod and waking the twenty paces to the bottom of the cascades. "You won't be able to foul me up too badly from down there," he called back, but his voice was teasing, not harsh.</p><p>"Sure," Andy muttered. He watched as Jones cast, sending his lure dancing over top of the cascades. The sunlight reflecting off the water backlit him, reducing his form to a simple silhouette, like a dancer behind a gauze curtain. This time, Jones didn't catch anything, but drew in his line and cast again without comment. Andy knew from watching the ease of his movements that Jones would be able to stand there at the edge of the stream for the rest of the day, his mind stilled by the familiarity of the movements and the peace of the setting.</p><p>Andy supposed that he probably shouldn't just stand there watching Jones fish, but could do his part to try obtain lunch. He closed his eyes, trying to recall the feel of Jones' arms guiding his—though his mind might have caught more on Eddie's breath in his ear, and the warm press of his chest against Andy's back. When he thought he could recall the movements, he started to sway the rod to the time of it, as if he were one partner in an unfamiliar dance, then at the right moment let the line slide out of his hand. This time the lure drifted most of the way across the pond, and even started to drift back as Andy manipulated the rod, before hitting the surface of the water and sinking. He glanced up stream to see if Jones had noticed that he'd done a little better, and found him preoccupied with a fish on his line.</p><p>An hour later, they had their handful trout, and Andy had even caught one of them, though Jones had said it was too little, and set it free again. The rest lay in a glistening pile next to Jones' boots, a little blood trickling to darken the edges of the creek. "Should be enough to warm our bellies," Jones said, gathering them up via a string through their mouths. "Come on downstream, and I'll show you how to clean them."</p><p>Cleaning them was a matter of a knife flick and a shake of the wrist for Jones, and a smelly mess for Andy. He watched as the blood floated downstream, and then dug a small hole for the guts, and wondered at the ease of Jones' movements. He'd heard that some of the fighting men shook at the sight of blood, even back here where it was supposed to be safe, but it didn't seem like anything shook Jones, except Andy's memory.</p><p>When the fish were clean, Jones wrapped them in leaves and put them under an upturned bucket in the shade, saying they could eat them in a bit. "Wanna see where this trail goes now," he said, and started off up past the cascades, not waiting for Andy's reply.</p><p>Andy couldn't imagine the answer was much different from "upstream," but he followed along anyway. It felt good to stretch his legs. Now that they weren't caught up in the work of catching fish, Andy felt he could get back to the questions of the night before. "What happened after we left Guadalcanal?" he asked. "We went to Australia, didn't we?"</p><p>"That's right," Jones agreed. "Brisbane first, for a coupla weeks, then Melbourne for R&amp;R. We were there for, I dunno, six months maybe, long spell. That's where we"—he paused, seeming to need to negotiate his way over the trunk of a fallen maple, though it couldn't have held his attention too tightly to speak—"got to know each other, I guess you could say."</p><p>"You transferred to my company," Andy supplied, pleased to be able to fill in a detail, even if only one based on his letters.</p><p>"That's right. My commission came through, and your promotion, so naturally we saw a little more of each other."</p><p>"Naturally," Andy echoed, watching the way Jones' shoulders curved forward into a hunch even as he strode up the path, rifle tucked under his arm with its barrel pointed at the ground in front of him. It moved as easily as the fishing rod had, like Jones considered it a part of his own body.</p><p>"It's hard to figure Melbourne unless you knew what the Canal was like," Jones continued. "After five months in the stinking jungle, it was like... I dunno, really, like being reborn. Paradise. Most of the battalion lost their heads, went crazy for all the girls and booze and that."</p><p>Andy tried to picture Jones losing his head over anything, and the image wasn't coming to him. "Did you?" he asked anyway.</p><p>Jones laughed, a low, throaty sound, full of some dark emotion that Andy couldn't name. "Oh yes."</p><p>"Did I?"</p><p>"You..." Jones finally stopped and turned, bracing one hand on the trunk of a young maple, as if he needed it to hold him up. He looked down at Andy with that smiling fondness from the morning by the fire. "You started a football team."</p><p>"Oh." Andy didn't know why he was disappointed that Jones didn't have anything in the way of dark secrets of Andy's misspent liberty. He thought of his question to Everett and asked it again. "So there's no woman down there who's expecting me to marry her?"</p><p>Instead of laughing like Andy would have expected, Jones' mouth twisted into a grimace and he turned away back up the path. "No," he said. "There's no woman."</p><p>Andy was sure that meant there had been <em>something</em>, but he didn't know how to ask what. When Jones stopped narrating and made Andy guess, it felt like groping his way through an unfamiliar room in the dark with no flashlight. "What was the camp like?" he asked, trying to find something to connect with his letters. He'd talked about their accommodations at an old racing track, and what Jones described then sounded close enough to what he'd written, though cast in a different light.</p><p>Once Jones was started again, he kept going easily enough, talking about their billets and how at first the men had been nearly too weak to move, but then replacements had started to pour in from the States, as green as Andy had been that first day on the Canal, and the Marine Corps had turned its mind to training them for the next battle. Jones did not, so far as Andy could tell, want to include the kind of personal detail he'd promised about that part of their service. Maybe it was just that he was embarrassed about losing his head, but Andy kept thinking about how Everett had said that he hadn't seen much of Andy in Melbourne, how he'd implied that he'd been too caught up with his own men to spare time for a friend. Jones had said that Everett hadn't approved of him, but hadn't said why.</p><p>Certainly nothing from the stories Jones was telling now would have merited more than a raised eyebrow even from Andy's own mother. They were amusing enough, but in a bowdlerised way, and Andy could tell from the pauses and dropped threads that Jones was leaving a lot out. He hadn't seemed to the night before, when he'd talked about Guadalcanal; that had been the frankest account Andy had heard yet, and unafraid of casting either Andy or Jones in a poor light. This was something else. Andy frowned and watched Jones stride up the path. He was close to running in places, bounding easily over fallen trees and slide areas where the rain had washed the trail into the creek, and Andy found he was puffing a bit as he tried to keep up. He was starting to get a headache from the exertion, his temples pounding along with his racing pulse, and the once cheerful sunshine was starting to burn his eyes.</p><p>Jones' story, tossed back over his shoulder like spilled salt as he walked, had moved on to training on some island in preparation for the next landing, Melbourne left behind in a cloud of inflated condoms. That was all he was going to say about Australia, it seemed. Andy knew from his letters that they hadn't gone back.</p><p>He opened his mouth to ask he didn't know what, where they were going, maybe, or if they could stop for a moment to rest, why Jones was lying to Andy when he'd promised him the truth, but his mouth was dry, and he was too out of breath to get more than a croak out. Jones didn't hear it. Andy cleared his throat and took a breath, but just as he did, the path opened up, and Jones stopped.</p><p>"There we are," Jones proclaimed, sweeping his arm out to encompass whatever was in front of him.</p><p>Andy got an impression of a hundred colours of green and flowing water before his body gave out and he sat on the ground with a thud. He was remembering why he'd been taking it easy when it came to physical exertion, and had to bury his pounding head in his arms to shut out the glare.</p><p>"Sorry," Andy gasped, and felt a flush of shame overwhelm him. Jones had clearly expected a companion who could keep up with him, on a mid-paced hike, and even though Andy knew he was still convalescing, he wasn't used to this kind of exertion, but Jones had expected it without thinking. He'd expected his friend Ack-Ack to keep up with him, and Andy had let him down.</p><p>"Skip?" Jones sounded a little desperate, voice close to Andy and too loud. "Andy, come on now."</p><p>"I'm okay," Andy ground out, teeth clenched against the pain. Jones yelling at him was not helping. "Just, for Christ's sake, Jones, just give me a minute."</p><p>He heard gravel crunch under Jones' boots as he stepped back.</p><p>Andy focused on trying to keep his head still and get enough air in his lungs at the same time. He hadn't felt this bad since the hospital, some months ago, and he didn't know what had kicked it off. It felt like more than just the exertion, but he hadn't really tested that yet. If he couldn't even go on a twenty minute hike without collapsing, he really wasn't going to go back to Bowduin as a coach. He didn't know what the hell he was going to do with any of his life.</p><p>"Andy, I..." Jones' voice was coming from right in front of him, still at Andy's level, and Andy waved vaguely at him to shut him up.</p><p>He was starting to catch his breath, at least, and with the slowing of his blood through veins, the pounding in his head eased a little, though not back to the point where he could open his eyes or raise his head.</p><p>He heard a soft thud and scuff of gravel, and then just stillness. There was rushing water nearby, more noise than the cascades above the pond had made, and bird song in the trees, but that was all. The sun beat at the back of Andy's neck, and warmed his hair, and he wished for shade, or hat. He could probably ask Jones, and he'd throw himself in the creek for Andy then stand over him dripping, but reaching out for help felt impossible.</p><p>Andy shifted his weight so that his eyes were pressed into his forearm, which rested on his knees. The pain intensified, but also spread wider and seemed easier to bear. The gravel scuffed again, and clothing rustled, and a moment later, Andy felt a cold cloth laid on the back of his neck. Water dripped down the sides of his neck and soaked the back of his collar, making him shiver as the cool of the stream water cut through the worst of the aches.</p><p>"Thanks," Andy muttered against his arm. A small, petty part of him didn't want Jones' help, not after he'd dragged Andy up here, and spent the last half hour lying to him when he'd promised the truth. He was sorry he couldn't be the man Jones wanted, but he was doing his best.</p><p>Andy groaned into the hollow between his knees and his chest. He hadn't really been doing his best since he'd woken up, and he knew it. Jones had to be able to tell that too. If Andy had been the man who'd won those silver stars, he'd face up to all this, fight tooth and nail to get his memories back, instead of letting the comfortable haze of his parents house swallow him.</p><p>The light above him shifted as Jones' shadow crossed him.</p><p>"Stop fluttering around me," Andy grumbled.</p><p>"Sorry."</p><p>Andy heard Jones sit down a little way uphill from him, and they both rested silently for a while. They had to be near a waterfall. Andy could feel the spray on the backs of his hands. Eventually he lifted his head enough to get a glimpse of whatever it was that Jones had thought was worth dragging him up here for. The hill they'd been climbing ended in a low cliff, the topsoil stripped away to layers of dark rock. Their creek cascaded over them, dropping two or three yards at a time from one verdant ledge to the next, sending a rainbow spray into the air. At the bottom, somewhat below the path, lay a pool so deeply green it was almost black against the brightness of the falls.</p><p>Jones was sitting on the side of the falls, the spray filling his hair with dew. He was watching the water, with his back deliberately turned to Andy.</p><p>Andy shaded his eyes and wished again for a hat or somewhere cool and quiet to sit, but the cloth on his neck was helping, a bit.</p><p>Deciding he was tired of them apologising to each other, he said, "It's very beautiful here."</p><p>Jones jerked around to look at him like Andy had fired a gun. His lips pulled back in something half way between a smile and a snarl, before his face smoothed out into his usual expression of bland attentiveness. "Reminds me of this little watering hole on the Canal, or I guess that reminded me of this, at the time. Fellows used to swim there."</p><p>"Did we?" Andy asked, hoping to get back to stories that he was actually in.</p><p>"Yeah," Jones said, and turned back to the falls. The rush of water almost swallowed his voice as he said, "One of the first times I met you, went there with the boys, and you and a few of the other officers were there already. Thought you'd tell us to take a hike, but we all ended up sharing. Weren't really much in the way of room."</p><p>Andy could picture a half dozen lean, naked bodies all trying to fit in a space not much bigger than the pond below them, the slide of skin, the rough housing as someone inevitably started a splash fight or tried to dunk his buddies. "Sounds nice," Andy commented.</p><p>"Was about the only break we ever got," Jones said, "though you always found a way to bring the boys spirits up when you could."</p><p>Jones had already told him about the moustache competition. Andy supposed it was good to know that he'd been able to handle unimaginable pressure for months on end with some kind of grace, that when put to the test, he'd risen up and faced the challenge like he'd always done at Bowduin. He only wished he didn't feel so far away from that now.</p><p>"Guess you're not used to seeing me"—he struggled for a word that wouldn't choke him, and finished pathetically—"like this."</p><p>"Not used to, no," Jones admitted. He got up and came to kneel beside Andy, shading him from the sun with his body. "It ain't the first time, though."</p><p>"Yeah?" Andy asked, but he didn't especially believe that Captain Ack-Ack Haldane would show vulnerability, at least not when it wasn't a deliberate choice to make himself likeable so that the men would follow him.</p><p>"Yeah." Jones considered for a moment before saying. "I ain't talked about Gloucester yet, but it was... it was like the Canal without the relief. We never got a moment when it weren't stinking and muddy and awful, clothes rotting off our bodies, skin rotting off our bones, half the company down with malaria, the other half just plain down. There was fighting at first, and at least that was something, but towards the end, when we was just holding turf that nobody wanted, no word coming about relief?" Jones shook his head. "You were company captain, and I weren't your XO yet, just a platoon leader, so I shoulda never been in your tent, but..."</p><p>"But?" Andy asked when Jones broke off again, again wondering at the silence, the obvious elision of something that clearly mattered to Jones enough to bind up in secrecy. Andy squinted up at him, but his expression was far away, like he was looking through time to that rain-drenched tent on the other side of the world.</p><p>"We liked each other's company, is all," Jones muttered, unconvinced and unconvincing. "Anyway, you'd been rubbed thin, like how when you fold a map too many times, and it gets holes in the creases. I don't recall what it was, just one damn thing too many, some bit of news, or no news when you was expecting something, but you just"—Jones rubbed his hand over his mouth, and squinted so hard that Andy wondered if were pushing back tears of his own—"crumpled up, like wet paper. I heard your pen hit the deck, then you had your head in your hands and you were shaking something awful. I'd just been sitting there, jawing about something or other, and you fell right there in front of me."</p><p>"What did you do?" Andy asked, caught up in the story as he had been in all the others. He searched through his thoughts for the sensation of it, he'd been weepy enough when he'd first come out of the coma that it should feel familiar, but though he could picture himself like a scene in a film, it was from Jones' description, not any memory of his own.</p><p>"Didn't know what to do," Jones admitted, "but I knew I couldn't let the boys see, so I told the SP on the hatch not to let anyone in for red gold and then, well, then I pulled you down onto the floor with me and held you in my arms and told you pretty nonsense until you came back to yourself again."</p><p>Andy tried to picture himself sobbing against one of his subordinate's shoulders, and couldn't. "What happened after that?"</p><p>Jones shrugged. "You apologised and caught some rack time, and two days later we were relieved. Of course, we all hoped it'd be back to Australia, but I guess we'd caused enough trouble the last time that they sent us to Pavuvu instead."</p><p>"Right." Pavuvu had been in Andy's letters too. It hadn't sounded like much fun, but at least it had been the sort of thing he'd been able to milk a sort of grim humour out of.</p><p>"You ain't invincible, Andy," Jones said. "You never were, just awful good at not showing when it hurt, so good as the boys tended to forget you was human like the rest of us." He reached over, and for a moment Andy thought Jones was going to pull him into an embrace like he had on New Britain, but he just took the cloth off the back of Andy's neck and wrung it out before standing to wet it in the falls. Instead of putting the cool cloth back on Andy's neck, Jones held it out to him, letting Andy take it and wipe the sweat from his face before returning it to his neck. "The only other time, well, that was after I got hit, and I gather you thought I wouldn't make it."</p><p>"On Peleliu," Andy said. The name still sounded strange on his tongue, a pin-prick on a map, not a place he'd cursed and bleed and almost met his end. He had no letters home from the six weeks spent there, but from the references the others made, it had been all seven circles of hell on one island.</p><p>"That's right." Jones held out his hand, and Andy could tell that he wanted to do anything rather than talk about whatever had gone wrong there. "We should go eat those fish before the raccoons get into them."</p><p>Andy took Jones' hand and let himself be pulled to his feet. He wobbled for a moment, and had to steady himself with a hand on Jones' shoulder, but then righted himself. Jones put his hand on the small of Andy's back anyway, and something tugged at the rough edges of his mind sometimes. It had never been as much a feeling of familiarity as a feeling that something should be familiar, a tongue feeling the space where a tooth had been.</p><p>"Go slow, huh?" Andy said, and Jones nodded. They made their way back down to the campsite in silence, Andy taking his time to find his footing, Jones racing ahead then pausing until Andy caught up.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Chapter 3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Andy's headache lingered even after he'd set himself up in the shade of their campsite, but Jones didn't seem to mind getting left with all the work of building a new fire and cooking the fish. He talked about Pavuvu and the boys building a camp out of a coconut swamp, about a trip to another island, and drinking far, far too much overproof hooch, and one of the mortarmen pouring him into bed.</p>
<p>He was still leaving things out, Andy thought, but Eddie had a nice voice and was good at telling stories, and Andy enjoyed just listening to him ramble on. It was a little like those country and western songs where the singer dropped into poetry part way through.</p>
<p>"Do you still play guitar?" he asked, when the adventure found a lull.</p>
<p>For a moment, Jones stopped, and he looked up at Andy with eyes so full of hope that Andy felt his own heart leap. Then Jones must have remembered that he himself had explained where the Hillbilly nickname had come from, and that Andy's letters had probably also mentioned the ubiquitous guitar. This was a memory that only went so far back as the night before, not the lost years. The growing joy curdled for the space of an eye blink, then was swept away into that expression of assumed ease that Andy was starting to get a little sick of.</p>
<p>"Still do," Jones said. "I ain't brung it along, guess maybe I shoulda."</p>
<p>"I'd have liked to hear it," Andy said, "but maybe we can sing around the fire tonight." It'd like a cowboy movie, and Andy had always found the notion romantic.</p>
<p>Jones laughed. "We? Since when do you sing?"</p>
<p>"Since when do I not?"</p>
<p>"But..." Jones was frowning at Andy with such intense confusion that he almost didn't notice when the flames started to lick up the skins of his fish. He cursed and poked them and the fire with a stick to settle it out.</p>
<p>"I never stole the show," Andy admitted, "but I used to play with the college swing band and would join the chorus when they needed an extra baritone. Sang in the church choir before that."</p>
<p>"That so?" Jones looked genuinely surprised, and Andy wondered why he'd kept that from a man who'd allegedly been his best friend. Maybe he'd just never gotten around to mentioning it.</p>
<p>"Maybe I just couldn't get enough of your dulcet tones, huh?" Andy asked, wanting to deflect Jones' sudden scrutiny.</p>
<p>Jones shook his head sharply, and jabbed at the fire again, though it wasn't doing anything wrong just then. "I ain't exactly Dick Powell," Jones muttered, and even from across the camp, Andy could see colour on his cheeks.</p>
<p>"I'll have to be the judge of that," Andy said.</p>
<p>Jones didn't answer, but focused on flipping the fish onto a pair of tin plates that already had slices of bread on the sides. They had forks, but Andy watched Jones pick at the scalding fish with his fingers and copied him. Jones had only lightly salted the fish, but they didn't need more than that. The flesh was delicate and juicy, only just cooked, and the bread soaked up the grease..</p>
<p>There was a boyish pleasure to sitting under a tree on a weekday afternoon, eating food they'd caught themselves, and forgoing cutlery only added to the illicit feeling.</p>
<p>Andy jostled Jones' shoulder, and when Jones gave him a smiling, sideways look, Andy said, "This is good."</p>
<p>Jones nodded, clearly pleased with himself. "Nothing beats line-caught trout."</p>
<p>"No, I mean"—Andy bumped his knee against Jones' and gestured at the campground with a greasy hand—"all of this. It's good. You were right. I think we should start again."</p>
<p>He'd expected that would please Jones, who after all had put so much time into trying to win his best friend back. Instead of grinning back at Andy, or even ducking his head trying to hide his gratification, Jones went still again. He drew a long breath through his teeth, and gave Andy another piercing look as if to see if he was making fun of him, then shook his head. "I'm shipping out soon," he muttered.</p>
<p>"I'll bet better at writing you back this time," Andy promised, "And you'll get leave, won't you? You're only on Parris Island."</p>
<p>Jones sighed. "I been thinking 'bout signing on for another tour, do another five in, anyhow, 'til the twins are out of school. Maybe go shipboard again. So I wouldn't be around much. Not sure as there'd be much point trying to keep this up."</p>
<p>"Oh." Andy had been picturing Jones mustering out as soon as his term of service allowed, going back to civilian life like everyone else, but he'd been a career man before the war hadn't he? He must not have known much besides the Marine Corps. "What did I say we were going to do, after? You said I'd promised you something."</p>
<p>"Buncha pretty nonsense," Jones snapped and got up. He yanked Andy's plate away from him, and started down towards the creek. "Gonna go wash these up."</p>
<p>"Eddie!" Andy called, but let it go when Jones didn't so much as glance back at him. Though Jones had that same loping stride, his back was rigid and his whole body seemed to flash the message that he didn't want to be touched.</p>
<p>Andy had been right to think that this was only going to hurt Jones. Whatever Andy was now, it would never again be the man possessing whatever qualities had won Jones' loyalty. That part of him was lost along with all the rest of those memories. Andy found himself sincerely wishing he could remember. He'd like to be whatever it was that Jones had said he'd die for.</p>
<p>He didn't want Eddie to give another five years to the Corps.</p>
<p>Andy leaned back, crushing the pungent ferns that were just starting to send their fiddleheads up into the world. He folded his arms behind his head and stared up at new leaves rustling against a bright spring sky. How many quiet moments like this he and Jones had found through the war, just sitting next to each other in companionable silence, resting and watching the world pass as it would? Andy squinted up at the leaves and tried to imagine they were the fronds of a coconut tree, but he didn't think the sound was right for that. It didn't <em>feel</em> right, and besides, Jones was gone.</p>
<p>He'd been gone for a while, Andy realised. He was pretty sure rinsing off a couple plates didn't take that long, even if Jones paused to bury the bones. The fishing rods were folded down and packed into the car, so he wasn't trying to catch dinner.</p>
<p>Andy had a vision of a bear or a panther or something also fishing down at the creek, and glanced around for the rifle. It too was in the back of the car.</p>
<p>Andy rolled to his knees and went to get it. Once he'd picked it up, his hands seemed to move on their own, checking the chamber and safety. It was an old single action model that only held two rounds at a time. Andy found the ammunition pouch, loaded, then snapped the bolt closed.</p>
<p>Even as he walked town to the creek, he knew he was being ridiculous. Jones would have called out if he was in trouble. They were close enough to hear any scuffle. There was no reason on Earth for Andy to be worried, let alone bring a rifle. Jones was going to laugh his ass off at his city boy friend. Andy would just have to say he wanted to go possum hunting, or whatever Jones had brought the rifle for in the first place.</p>
<p>Still, Andy found himself walking in a half crouch, each boot carefully placed so as not to make any noise on the gravel before he took the next step. His body remembered this, even as his mind refused to tell him how he'd learned it. The discordance sent a shiver down Andy's spine, and the hairs on the back of his neck tingled. As he stepped out of the undergrowth onto the bank of the creek, Andy's eyes took in the whole scene at once.</p>
<p>Jones was on the ground. Andy marked his position and lifted the rifle, sweeping it across the gravel and the far bank of the stream, but didn't see any sign of movement of gleam of metal. A fish jumped, and Andy started and flashed towards the sound of it slapping back into the water, his finger dropping to the trigger. Nothing.</p>
<p>He lowered the rifle until it's barrel pointed at the ground three feet ahead of him, and turned back to Jones. He was kneeling at the edge of the water, the stream rippling around his knees, soaking his trousers, plates cast to one side, still dirty. He wasn't moving, wasn't making any noise. There wasn't any blood in the water. Andy crept closer, gaze flitting between Jones and the underbrush on the far bank. Jones was curled in on himself, his face buried in his hands.</p>
<p>It took Andy far too long to work out that Jones wasn't hurt, at least not physically: he was weeping. Andy hadn't seen it at first because he was keeping his tears balled up inside him, but his shoulders kept hitching slightly, and, now that he was close enough, Andy could hear the little whimpers that escaped with the tears that he wasn't able to hold back.</p>
<p>Andy felt his stomach turn sour, and nausea rose up to his throat, but he swallowed it back. He didn't know if he wanted to run or scream or throw up, but the sight of Jones wrecked on the ground sent every nerve on fire with the need to do something.</p>
<p>The rifle clicked as Andy safed it and set it on the gravel, and Jones' body jerked as if Andy had fired a round into the air. He unfolded and half turned to face Andy, his eyes red, and tears and snot streaking down his face.</p>
<p>"Easy," Andy said. He dropped to his knees next to Jones, and like when he'd picked up the rifle, his body seemed to move on its own as he pulled Jones forward into his arms. He didn't resist like Andy'd feared he might, but fell forward into the embrace. His body was still half twisted around, but Jones clung to Andy's shirt and buried his face against his chest and kept on crying, now open, heaving sobs. He cried like every harm three years of war had laid on his soul had all cut into him at once. He cried like his heart was broken, and nothing in Heaven or on Earth could hope to mend it.</p>
<p>Andy stroked his fingers through Jones' curly hair as he tried to figure out what the hell to do with a double armful of sobbing Marine. "Hey, easy, it's gonna be okay," he said, but he was pretty sure that was a lie. It didn't seem to help, in any case. Jones just shook his head against Andy's chest, and tried and failed to pull himself together. All Andy could do was hold on and wish he knew what Ack-Ack would say at a time like this.</p>
<p>Eventually Jones sniffled in enough deep breaths that he could steady himself. "Sorry," he muttered, but didn't pull away, or even loosen his hold on Andy's shirt. "I'm sorry, Skip. I thought I could do this, but I ain't got it in me."</p>
<p>Andy made shushing noises and rubbed his hand up and down Jones' back. What had Jones said? Pretty nonsense? At least Andy was good at that kind of thing. He told Jones that he was there now, and that it was okay, and it didn't matter. He didn't think Jones believed a word of it, and frankly Andy didn't either, but it didn't seem to calm him a little, even if he still wasn't letting go of Andy.</p>
<p>"No, I'm the one who's sorry," Andy said. "I shouldn't have asked this of you. It's not fair."</p>
<p>"Ain't none of this fair," Jones muttered. "I thought I could help you, but I just"—his voice cracked—"I'm a selfish son of a bitch. I been lying to you, Andy."</p>
<p>"I know," Andy said, but found he couldn't be angry about it like he had been that morning. Whatever Jones was leaving out of his stories, it was cutting him deeper than it was Andy.</p>
<p>"What?" Jones demanded, lifting his head a little.</p>
<p>"You're not that good a liar, Jones," Andy told him, then wondered if it would have been so obvious to any other man.</p>
<p>"I thought. I dunno..." Jones sniffed loudly, and leaned back so he could wipe his nose on his own sleeve instead of Andy's shirt. He looked up at Andy, and the longing was so clear on his face.</p>
<p>Andy couldn't stand the bewildered loss in Jones' expression and bent down to press a kiss to his forehead. He didn't know why he did it, besides that it felt right. Eddie's skin tasted of salt, and felt clammy under the warmth of Andy's lips.</p>
<p>Jones whimpered like Andy had struck him instead of kissing him. He twisted away and pressed his face against Andy's shoulder again. "So you worked it out, then, huh?" Jones asked, voice muffled.</p>
<p>"Worked what out?" Andy asked, even though he could feel the edges of it in his mind, like he was blindfolded and fitting in the last piece of a puzzle by touch alone.</p>
<p>"That we were lovers," Jones said.</p>
<p>"Oh." No, Andy hadn't worked that out, and now having Jones practically sitting in his lap had a whole different meaning to it. Andy almost shoved him away, but stopped himself before he could. His body tensed as he tried to work out what to do.</p>
<p>Jones jerked away, and twisted until Andy no longer had a hold on him, ending up on his ass a few feet away.</p>
<p>"Guess you didn't," Jones said. He settled on the gravel next to Andy, his arms wrapped around his knees.</p>
<p>"No, no, I..." Andy started, but he didn't know what he was trying to deny. The story fit with all the things that Jones had left out, and with Everett's implied censure. It fit with how broken up Jones was, and Andy suddenly remembered the laundry room comment about a Dear John letter.</p>
<p>What didn't track was that Andy had never been with a man, had never even thought about being with a man.</p>
<p>"Yeah," Jones muttered, sounding more resigned than bitter, "you had a hard time with that the first time, too. That's why I wanted to let it lie."</p>
<p>"Was I"—Andy licked his lips, not sure where to start with what he wanted to ask—"ashamed?"</p>
<p>"You told me you weren't," Jones said, but didn't seem convinced of that.</p>
<p>Had that been what Andy had wanted to forget? Not the violence of the war, but the homosexuality it had driven him into? Andy felt that sick feeling back in his stomach again, but didn't know what he was dreading: the truth about himself, or that he might have wanted to wipe that out so badly that he'd destroy himself in the process.</p>
<p>"What did I promise you?" Andy asked.</p>
<p>Jones snorted and looked down at his boots. He looked a little green too, his skin an unhealthy ashy tint, setting off the red of his nose and eyes. "You said you'd make an honest man outta me," Jones explained, and pressed on before Andy could ask how the hell that was meant to have worked. "Said we'd muster out together, and go some place we could just be, and you'd put a ring on my finger and promise God to love me until death took you. Shoulda known better than to believe that."</p>
<p>Andy wondered when, exactly, in the war he'd lost his damn mind. He supposed he ought to feel repelled by the notion, but mostly he was just bewildered. Even so, he could feel the affection for Jones tugging at his heart; not half an hour ago, Andy had been proposing that they be friends or pen pals or something of that kind. Which had, it seemed, been enough to push Jones into hysterics. Was that because he was a queer? They were meant to be womanish and sensitive. Had Andy been like that when he was with Jones? But Jones had said he'd only lost a hold of himself once, and that had been at a time of unendurable stress.</p>
<p>He'd been silent for too long, and now Jones was clearly trying to pull himself back together so that he could go back to the impeccably-behaved war buddy, who was just trying to help Andy sort through his memories. Andy didn't want him to go back to lying, didn't want to stop getting the answers that were finally freely given, even if every word was costing Jones. He asked, "How did it happen, the first time?"</p>
<p>Jones sighed, and he had in the set of his shoulders the posture of a man who was about to take a beating he thought he deserved. He still wasn't looking at Andy when he said, "We'd been flirting around each other for a coupla months, I reckon, on the Canal and in Australia. I don't think you knew what you were doing. I did, but should've known better. Should've known better than to get drunk and kiss you, that's for sure."</p>
<p>"How'd I take that?" Andy asked, though he could guess. He tried to imagine if a close friend like Everett had suddenly confessed his lust for him.</p>
<p>"None too good," Jones admitted, grimacing. "You didn't punch me in the mouth, though, and when I offered to ask for a transfer, you said we'd just put it behind us, be friends. 'Course, I agreed. I was just happy you hadn't reported me to the SPs, even happier you were still willing to look at me. I'd about convinced myself I didn't mind if we kept it to being friends, when a week later, you came back to me and said you'd been thinking things through, and you'd set on trying it like I wanted us to be. Guess you must have liked it all right, because you never said anything 'bout stopping."</p>
<p>"Was one of us... I mean, which of us..." Andy didn't even know how to ask, properly, but Jones picked up the dropped question easily enough.</p>
<p>"It weren't like that," he said dismissively. "I know guys who only like one way or the other, and that's fine, but you, you'd take me every way I offered; you said you wanted... Christ, I don't know what you wanted."</p>
<p>He did know, but he wouldn't say it. There were some memories that he wouldn't spoil by sharing them, not even with the ghost of the man he'd loved.</p>
<p>"It's okay," Andy said, holding up a staying hand. He was still on his knees on the edge of the steam, gravel digging into his flesh, but he didn't know where to go from here. He looked over at Jones, still staring into the water, and couldn't describe what he felt.</p>
<p>Andy didn't think he loved him, not like he should love a fiancée or a wife, but he'd liked being near Jones, liked the sound of his voice, and the way he told stories. That kind of fondness made sense for a buddy, a best friend even, but it must have once been more. Andy was pretty sure he would have died for this man without a second thought, back when he'd been Ack-Ack Haldane. He'd loved Jones enough to let him fuck Andy, loved him enough to promise to marry him, or as close to marriage as two men could get. And how close was that? It didn't seem to Andy as if it could be anything but a parody of the real thing.</p>
<p>Had Andy come to regret his promises, and only been able to find oblivion as a way out? That seemed like putting too much forethought into it, though. Surely it was the horror of combat Andy had needed to forget, and Jones had just been caught in the blast radius.</p>
<p>"I don't expect that you'll do that for me again," Jones said, thoughts having leaped ahead of Andy's. "That ain't why I dragged you out here."</p>
<p>"Never crossed my mind," Andy said honestly. "You've been nothing but a gentleman."</p>
<p>Jones snorted at that, and in an effort to keep avoiding Andy's gaze, his eyes fell on the rifle. His lips parted in surprise, but then he shook his head slightly and got up to go pick it up.</p>
<p>"I'm going to see if I can't catch dinner," he said, and strode off up the creek.</p>
<p>"You want company?" Andy asked, though he was pretty sure of the answer.</p>
<p>"Rather not."</p>
<p>Andy stayed where he was until Jones was out of sight, then picked up the plates and rinsed them, rubbing sand at the grease until it was evenly smeared across the surface of the tin, and Andy's fingers had turned white with cold. He didn't let himself think.</p>
<p>Finished, Andy got up and looked around the creek. It couldn't be later than two in the afternoon, but he felt immensely tired, and decided to go back to the campsite to rest for a bit.</p>
<p>He remembered that he'd brought a novel to read on the train, and went into the glove box to get it. The car keys gleamed in the ignition, and Andy stared at them for a long moment, imagining getting behind the wheel and driving away, driving all the way back to Lawrence and the shelter of his father's house. He pictured it: all those miles of driving, and ending up late at night on his parents' doorstep. His mother would be worried, would pull him into an embrace, pressing her face to Andy's shoulder, until he told them why he'd fled. There'd be no home for him after that.</p>
<p>Andy picked up the book, and slammed the car door shut, setting the keys swinging. He went to lie inside of the tent, but instead of reading, he lay on his back on top of his sleeping bag, staring up at the canvas, with the book clutched to his chest.</p>
<p>The feeling of being caught inside someone else's dream certainly hadn't faded.</p>
<p>Andy considered the idea that Jones might be lying. It could be that Jones was a queer who had wanted Andy and not gotten him, and was now spinning a narrative where he'd won his prize, maybe with an eye to getting Andy in truth now, when he was vulnerable and confused.</p>
<p>If that were true Jones would have to be the best actor Andy had ever seen, and be meticulous at keeping the layers of his story straight, and aligned with letters home that he presumably hadn't read. And to what end? Jones hadn't tried to pressure Andy into any kind of sexual contact, at least not yet. Andy supposed that Jones could attempt something as they shared the tent that night, but it hardly seemed likely. If that was his intention, why wait for the second night? For that matter, why confess all, and then leave the keys in the car?</p>
<p>Or was it to be blackmail? That's what people did to queers, wasn't it? Maybe when Jones got back, he'd spin some tale of just needing a little money, and would Andy help out for old time's sake, leaving it implied that there could be consequences if he didn't. But if he intended to blackmail Andy with the secret, Jones ought to have manufactured some proof. It could be that he had some, but why this whole show? Andy wasn't that confused, and anyone who'd known Ack-Ack wouldn't have expected Andy to fall for something like that.</p>
<p>Any version where Jones was lying had too many complications and relied too heavily on Jones being able to cook all this up on the fly when he hadn't known Andy was coming. It just didn't seem like something Eddie would do, anyway.</p>
<p>But if the story was true as far as Jones could tell it, what did that mean for Andy? Andy had no evidence of his own feelings, which proved nothing: such an affair couldn't have been mentioned in letters, even if he would have said anything about something so shameful to his parents.</p>
<p>All Andy had to go on was Jones' brief account and that damn promise. Andy couldn't imagine that he would have promised something so profound with no intention of keeping his word. He'd always prided himself on his honesty, and he couldn't think of anything from his own letters or Jones' accounts that showed that war had altered that in him.</p>
<p>Andy shifted against the sleeping bag, trying to move so that that one tree root didn't dig into his hip.</p>
<p>If Jones was telling the truth now, and Andy had been telling the truth then, well, that laid at Andy's feet the notion that he'd fallen in love body and soul with another man—that Andy was a homosexual.</p>
<p>Even thinking the word made Andy's stomach churn with anxiety. It wasn't true, was it? It hadn't been something that'd been true before the war. Andy thought back over his high school and college flirtations with women, always light, always one right after another, never going anywhere serious. It wasn't that he hadn't found the girls attractive. He'd certainly liked kissing them, and they'd smelled nice. Only, between football, baseball, student government, Sigma Nu, band practice and his own studies, Andy had never had much time for properly dating someone. Some of the guys had talked about touching themselves while imagining actresses or even girls they knew, but Andy had never done that. He'd sometimes woken up with an erection, or even having come inside his pyjamas, with dim memories of indistinct warmth and pleasure haunting his dreams, but never any faces. Looking back, Andy wondered if maybe he'd thought less about sex than most of the boys in his cohort, choosing instead to pour his energy into his projects.</p>
<p>Was that a sign that he'd always been a homosexual? Andy had chosen to surround himself with men, had always enjoyed their company, but so had all the other guys. Bowduin was an all-male college. Most schools that would have taken him were.</p>
<p>They said war changed men; it'd certainly changed Everett, and all the others. Maybe it had made Andy into this, when he hadn't been before. Or maybe he had been before and managed to repress even a hint of it.</p>
<p>It was very difficult to work this out when the only points of comparison Andy had were hushed stories of mincing, effeminate pansies in New York, coarse insults about sucking cock, and Edward Jones saying Andy had wanted to marry him.</p>
<p>Andy supposed, at the base of it all, if it were true, he would be sexually attracted to Jones. He certainly liked the man, had liked him almost immediately, but did he want to have sex with him?</p>
<p>He tried to imagine kissing Jones the way he'd kissed his various girlfriends, though the height difference made that more difficult. Andy closed his eyes, and pictured Jones leaning down and taking Andy's face in his hands, and gently touching their lips together. The image sent a shiver of desire through him, and Andy's eyes snapped open again.</p>
<p>A normal man would have been repulsed by that, surely. How many times had Andy heard of queers getting beaten or even murdered in retaliation for making a move on a regular guy? But that idea was in itself appalling. Andy felt his hands clenching around the book at the thought of anyone striking Jones.</p>
<p>Jones who'd been unfailingly kind to Andy, even as his own heart was breaking with loss. Jones who was willing to torture himself by being near what he wanted most while not letting himself have it, or even let out a whisper that he wanted it. Andy thought of him slumped at the edge of the water, weeping at the unfairness of it all. Andy'd wished then that he could do or say something to ease that loss and had come up with nothing but empty words, any promise that it would be all right made all the more empty by the memory of the last promise Andy had made and not kept.</p>
<p>A renewal of that vow was likely the only thing that would heal Jones' wounds, and even now that Andy understood, he didn't think he could go that far. He didn't think that he had it in him to surrender everything for a man he hardly knew, no matter how much that man loved him. Andy wasn't even sure that they could be together, like that, and it wasn't fair to try without knowing that.</p>
<p>None of Andy's choices had been made with consideration of Jones' feelings, but he was going to have to start considering them now. Andy had to make his own mind up before he proposed anything to Jones.</p>
<p>His thoughts drifted back to the imagined kiss and expanded on it. Their bodies would be pressed up against each other. With Jones' big, rough hands cradling Andy's face, Andy might take hold of Jones' hips, or run his hands up and down his back. They could undress each other as they kissed, hands fumbling for buttons even as Jones slipped his tongue into Andy's mouth, and they rubbed their bodies against each other. Andy wasn't completely sure what would happen after that. He had a basic anatomical knowledge of the options, largely based on lurid locker room talk, but none of them had sounded very appealing.</p>
<p>Even sticking to urgent touches, Andy felt himself starting to harden in response to the images. He put two fingers to his throat and felt his heart rate picking up. Without thinking, Andy rolled his hips to rub against the inside of his pants, groaning softly in pleasure.</p>
<p>Andy stopped. It was enough. He didn't have to go all the way to shaming himself by jerking off to the image of a man who was probably less than a mile away. What if Jones came back and found him like this, anyway? How would Andy explain that?</p>
<p>He lay there on his back, flushed and panting, and forced his thoughts away from the fantasy. How long, he wondered, had it taken him to reach this conclusion the first time? Jones didn't seem to have fond memories of Andy's self discovery, but he'd also said that Andy hadn't been ashamed of what they did together. Andy thought of those long months in Melbourne, baking in the warmth of an Australian summer and falling in love. All the gaps in Jones' earlier account must have been filled with their lust.</p>
<p>What had that been like? He'd never been in love before Jones had swept him off his feet, and he didn't think he was now, not even knowing what he'd wanted while he was at war. Jones had assumed that Andy had been a different man at home, and had quietly shirked his promises in exchange for a return to his old life: true, after a fashion, but not for the reasons Jones feared. Andy would have kept that promise if he'd remembered it. He didn't think it could fairly be said to bind him now; Jones at least didn't seem to expect anything of Andy, though he clearly hoped for a return to his old self.</p>
<p>But what about Andy? What the hell had Andy been thinking when he'd made those promises? Jones had said they planned to go somewhere they could live together, so maybe Boston or New York? Andy couldn't begin to calculate the financial cost of a move like that, let alone the social one, and yet he'd apparently been ready to do it.</p>
<p>Andy had never been the kind of man who would consider jumping oblivion with that kind of surety. His life before the war had been full of hard work and finely calculated risks: studying hard to get the best grades and an athletic scholarship that made him the first person in his family to go to college, and only the second to graduate high school, after his sister. Once at Bowduin, spent the little free time he'd had nurturing all the right connections to line up a post-graduate job there, attempting to hold off his military service until he was established. It wasn't that Andy didn't have the flexibility or intuition to grab hold of a piece of good fortune or alter his course, but half of that was having a well-laid plan that allowed for improvisation.</p>
<p>Moving to another city with a male lover wasn't improvisation; it was setting the plan on fire and throwing it out the window so the ashes fell on the curb.</p>
<p>Andy knew that there was enough romance in his soul to find that kind of recklessness immensely appealing. Who wouldn't want to be with the kind of person a man would be willing to ruin his life for? Or maybe that was Jones, not Andy, and what did Andy know about Jones, really?</p>
<p>For all that Andy had spent the last day hearing about their wartime experiences and read dozens of his letters, he still felt the answer was very little. Jones liked fly fishing and hunting, did his best to look after his mother and younger siblings, played the guitar, was planning to stay with the Marines now that Andy didn't want him. Andy not wanting Jones had been enough to break his heart.</p>
<p>If nothing else, Andy owed it to Jones to treat this cautiously. It couldn't be a fling or an experiment. Andy was either going to have to decide to keep the promises he didn't remember, or he was going to go back to his parents house and let his years at war sleep at the bottom of the River Lethe.</p>
<p>All this thinking had brought back Andy's headache, and flung his arm over his eyes. It was too complicated and too new to decide on now. He'd have to see how he felt after a nap, when Jones had returned from his hunting trip. Andy curled up on his side on top of one sleeping bag, and pulled the other on top of him, letting the sun on the tent and the rustle of wind in the leaves lull him into sleep.</p>
<hr/>
<p>Jones wandered back to camp not long before sunset, empty-handed and grim, but he smiled when he saw Andy sitting under the tree reading his book.</p>
<p>"Guess we're gone starve," he said regretfully and took the rounds out of the rifle before checking it over and putting it away. He dropped into a crouch next to Andy's boondocker, his hands draped over his knees. He looked tired, and Andy wanted to pull him to his chest and stroke his hair while he rested. At least his colour seemed a little better: the walk had put a flush back into Jones' cheeks, and dried his eyes. He looked at Andy with the same steadiness that he'd perfected over the past twenty-four hours.</p>
<p>"No luck then?" Andy asked.</p>
<p>"Nothing I could rightly kill. Ain't really the time of year." Jones flashed a grin at Andy. "But I have a couple cans of beans in the car."</p>
<p>"We'll probably survive, then," Andy commented. He wanted to ask Jones how he was doing, if the walk by himself in the familiar woods had brought him any peace, but even after the confession on the riverbank, it seemed too personal. He'd tried so hard to keep his grief from Andy, and Andy didn't want to disrespect that.</p>
<p>"How's the book?" Jones asked.</p>
<p>Andy shrugged. "Okay, for a war story. Seemed to be all I had in my foot locker."</p>
<p>"Yeah, I never understood that," Jones said. "I asked you once, and you said you were trying to make sense of the whole thing. I said there was no sense to be found in any of it, and you laughed and said I was probably right, and went back to your damn book."</p>
<p>"Why'd you join up, then?" Andy asked.</p>
<p>Jones shrugged. "We needed the money, and it was the only thing paying decent in '35. Plus Ma'd just had the twins, and I needed to not be in the house no more." He glanced down at his hands and shifted his weight. "Guess I coulda gone north, tried to find a factory job, but the recruiter said it'd be an adventure, and I fell for that hook, line, and sinker."</p>
<p>"Daring young man," Andy said fondly. He'd spent the summer of '35 working in the wool mill with his father and older brother, which had certainly given him a taste for getting enough education that he didn't have to do that for longer than he absolutely had to.</p>
<p>"A proper fool is what Ma called me, but she didn't object to me sending my pay home, especially after Pa decided he didn't want to be in the house with the twins, neither."</p>
<p>What would Andy have done if his father had died or left them? It was hard to picture. His older brother would have taken care of them, and let Andy follow his dreams of college. They'd all been so proud of him, urging him forward like he stood in for the whole family and every one of his victories—on the field, in honours classes, at war—had shone back onto them. Andy's brother had worked in the mill since he was fourteen. Andy giving up a damn thing had never even been a question.</p>
<p>He reached out and put his hand on top of Jones' wrist, squeezing lightly. Jones glanced down sharply, like he'd never been touched before. "You deserve to have someone who looks after you for a change," Andy said.</p>
<p>Jones sucked in a sharp breath and looked up with that hope-filled expression. "That ain't the first time you've said that."</p>
<p>Andy wasn't surprised. "I was right then, too. But it seems like you've been doing nothing but look after me since I showed up at your door."</p>
<p>"Oh, Andy, I never minded that. Didn't mind doing all that for my family, neither, just sometimes"—he turned his arm under Andy's hand until their hands rested palm to palm—"a body gets tired, you know?"</p>
<p>"Yeah, I know," Andy said. He squeezed Jones' hand and wondered how many quiet moments just like this one they'd shared over the years. It was nice to have someone he could lean on and who knew he could lean on him. It was like how his team worked, but just the two of them and all the time.</p>
<p>Jones was staring at him, his lips parted and his blue eyes dark with desire. They both seemed to notice the charge in the air at the same moment. Jones dropped Andy's hand and stood. "Should go heat up those beans, maybe toast the bread."</p>
<p>"Sure," Andy said, and watched Jones poke the fire back to life from its banked embers.</p>
<p>Andy was either going to have to either make up his mind soon or be more careful. The way they were going, if he didn't make a choice one way or another, their bodies were going to do it for them, and Andy couldn't see that ending well.</p>
<p>They ate the beans out of the cans, scooping them out with the toast and licking their fingers to cool them. It got dark fast, and soon only the light of the fire lit Jones' face as he sat across from Andy. When Andy leaned forward, Jones frowned and asked, "You warm enough, Skip? I can get you a blanket."</p>
<p>"No, no," Andy protested, "just enjoying the fire."</p>
<p>Jones settled, even if he didn't look entirely convinced. Then the corners of his eyes crinkled and he started to beat out time with his palm on his knee. "Here's a song, if you still wanted to sing around the fire," he said, and before Andy could say that he absolutely did, started in on "Red River Valley." He wasn't Dick Powell, or Roy Rogers, but he had a sweet voice that was only a little ragged on the high notes, and Andy could see how he'd never wanted to interrupt it with his own efforts before.</p>
<p>Andy only knew the words to the chorus, and joined in when it came around, startling Jones so badly he almost lost time. Andy hadn't sung since he'd woken up, and his voice had a roughness to it that he didn't remember, but it blended with Jones' well enough for a campfire song.</p>
<p>When they finished, Jones swung immediately into a country song Andy didn't know, so he whistled a counterpoint to the melody, throwing enough trills and warbles in that Jones started to laugh and lost his place.</p>
<p>"All right, Skipper, we'll do one you know," Jones said, wiping his eyes.</p>
<p>Of course then Andy forgot every song he'd every learned the lyrics to except "I've Got a Gal in Kalamazoo," which wasn't really meant to be done a capella, but he tried it anyway, and this time Jones was the one who played counter to the music, adding nonsense lyrics to the bridge, and trying to foul up Andy's rhythm until they both dissolved into a muddle.</p>
<p>It felt good to laugh. Andy hadn't had enough of that since he'd woken up. It'd all be confusion and doubt, not this spark of joy he shared with Jones. He felt light, as if he'd been drinking all evening, even though they'd only had coffee. He felt like anything was possible, as long as they stuck with each other.</p>
<p>The fire had burned down to embers, and the stars gleamed above them. There was no moon, and Andy squinted up, trying to remember constellations. They looked wrong somehow, Orion in the wrong place, and some missing. They weren't <em>that</em> far south of Massachusetts. When Andy looked back to the fire, feeling strangely dizzy, Jones was watching him. The orange glow of the flames softened his face, and made him look younger. Andy wondered if he'd ever felt young.</p>
<p>"I'm turning in," Jones said and got up.</p>
<p>Andy watched him make his way to the tent, and wondered at how much weight the idea of them sleeping inches apart now held. He'd hardly thought of it the night before, though he now imagined that Jones must have.</p>
<p>There was nothing for it, anyway. Andy could hardly sit out here all night, and it was starting to get cold. At least they were sleeping nearly fully clothed and in their own sleeping bags.</p>
<p>When Andy got into the tent, Jones had already tucked himself in and curled into a ball with his back to the place Andy would sleep. He was just going to pretend Andy wasn't there, then. The thought stung, even though Andy knew it was more than fair. What must it be like to have something you'd wanted for so long that close, and not be able to reach out and close the last few inches?</p>
<p>"Good night," Andy said, and Jones grunted irritably. Andy lay on his back and stared up into the darkness, and stayed awake for a long time.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Chapter 4</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Andy woke in the grey light that preceded dawn, head feeling clearer than it had in days. Sometime in the night, he'd rolled to his side so that he faced Jones, who himself had ended up on his back. Jones was still out cold, sleeping with his mouth open and snoring slightly. Andy propped his head up on one arm and stared down at him, the affection in his chest warming him against the lingering chill.</p>
<p>There wasn't much about Jones that most men would call beautiful, or even handsome, except maybe those expressive blue eyes, but looking down on him now, Andy could hardly hold himself back from reaching out to caress his cheek. The more he thought about it, the more Andy felt that he liked that Jones was distinctive rather than pretty, the sharp angles of his face had their own particular charm. He wondered if Ack-Ack had told Jones that. He should have. Jones was a good man, for all that he was apparently a fairy, and he deserved to have someone who treated him right.</p>
<p>If Andy left, would the next person Jones found be as kind as he deserved?</p>
<p>A knot of affection and possessiveness filled his chest at the thought of Jones with someone else. It wasn't right, Andy certainly had no real claim on him, and if he decided to ship out again, Jones should find someone he could be with, someone whole who knew that what he was feeling was real, not the ghost of something he'd once wanted.</p>
<p>Andy wished he could know that for sure. Lying here, looking down at Jones' face, as he must have dozens of times before, the attraction felt real. He wanted to lean down and kiss Eddie, and that desire felt both strange and familiar at once. Andy should feel ashamed of it. Everything he knew about the world told him that he should, that this was wrong in the eyes of God, society and the law, but it didn't feel wrong. It felt like sweet cool water washing his soul, and nothing in that could be a sin.</p>
<p>Andy didn't know how long he'd been wool gathering before Jones stirred and wiped at his mouth with the back of his hand, then stretched until he hit the back of the tent behind him. Finally he opened his eyes and blinked up at Andy.</p>
<p>"Hey," he said, and smiled.</p>
<p>"Good morning," Andy answered. He should probably start to get up, but he liked lying here looking down at Jones.</p>
<p>"Andy?" Jones asked, hope back in his voice, as if Andy could have come back into his memories as he slept.</p>
<p>Andy should tell him, again, that he wasn't the man Jones wanted, that he probably never would be Ack-Ack Haldane, but he wanted to be that man now more than ever. "May I kiss you?" he asked.</p>
<p>"Ah, fuck," Jones groaned and covered his face with his hands.</p>
<p>"I'm sorry," Andy said immediately, wishing there were somewhere to wriggle away to, without hitting the tent wall.</p>
<p>"No, it's..." Jones' hands were still covering his eyes, now grinding the heels against them. "Christ, why are you doing this to me?"</p>
<p>Andy didn't have an answer, and had some suspicion that Jones might have been asking Jesus anyway. He stayed where he was, and waited for Jones to decide what he wanted.</p>
<p>When Jones moved, it was almost too fast to follow. His hand flew up and grabbed Andy by the scruff of his neck, dragging him down until their mouths crashed together. He wrapped the fingers of his other hand through Andy's hair and tugged his head around to a better angle, then started to kiss him properly. The sudden violence shocked the breath out of Andy, and he couldn't seem to catch it again after that. Jones bit at his lips and licked his way past Andy's teeth until his tongue was in his mouth, fingers still holding Andy's head in place.</p>
<p>He was just as possessive and domineering as he had been in Andy's fantasy, and Andy moaned into the kiss. His tongue kept touching Eddie's, and every move of their lips together kicked off another wave of desire in him. It wasn't just him moaning, now, they were both panting and grunting like animals in heat. This was a hundred times better than any fantasy, filthier and more real. Andy rolled until he was lying half on top of Jones, but they had the sleeping bags and all of their clothes between them, and all Andy could do was rut against the padded shape of Jones' hip.</p>
<p>Jones broke the kiss as abruptly as he'd started it via yanking on Andy's hair until he had to lift his head away.</p>
<p>"This ain't right," Jones panted, though his eyes were dark, and he looked just as overtaken with lust as Andy was.</p>
<p>"Feels okay to me," Andy answered, clutching at the shoulder of Jones' shirt to keep from being pushed away entirely. It had, too. It was the first time Andy remembered kissing a man, and the first romantic kiss since before he'd shipped out, and he'd liked it. He wanted to keep doing it.</p>
<p>"No, I mean. Aw, hell, Andy, I just woke up; I ain't got the least idea what I mean. Lemme think, will you?"</p>
<p>"Sure," Andy said, but he didn't want to roll of Jones, not when the warmth of his body was seeping through the layers between them and seeming to fill the whole tent with the musk of perspiration, dirt, sunshine and sex. The smell tugged at something inside Andy, a memory he couldn't pin down to locker rooms or bus trips back from away games. Everything in him was pulling him back towards the kiss, but he made himself wait. He let go of Jones' shoulder to give him room.</p>
<p>Jones rolled onto his side and shuffled back until there was as much of the tent between them as he could manage. "What's this about?"</p>
<p>Andy shook his head. "I don't know. I just..." He felt around his dizzied mind until he found words that felt right. "I just want this. I want you. Like we used to be."</p>
<p>"That weren't you," Jones snapped.</p>
<p>Andy had been right the night before. It was going to have to be all or nothing with Jones. He didn't even remember deciding on all, but he had, and now it was just a matter of convincing Jones that he meant it. "Do you think the war changed me that much?" Andy asked. "I fell in love with you once, why not again?"</p>
<p>"That was different," Jones muttered. He'd pulled the sleeping bag up to his chin and worried at the edge. "Couldn't afford to be picky over there. Only so many options, and all. Back here's different."</p>
<p>"No it isn't," Andy insisted, and he risked reaching out to cup the side of Jones' face, brushing his thumb back and forth across the bristle of stubble. Mornings like this were the only time Eddie wasn't clean shaven. "I couldn't choose anyone else, no matter where we are."</p>
<p>Jones whimpered and blinked hard. He couldn't hide the hurt in his eyes, how deeply Andy's five months of silence had cut him showing in the tight line of his mouth as he refused to let his lip quiver. He swallowed and blinked some more before saying roughly, "Andy," but couldn't find any other words.</p>
<p>Andy wished he knew what to say that would convince Jones to start kissing him again. "Please," Andy whispered, still stroking Jones' cheek, "let me make it up to you."</p>
<p>"Okay," Jones took a long breath and let it out with a sigh. "Okay, but let's do this proper."</p>
<p>"You'll have to show me what you like," Andy said, but he was already pushing out of his sleeping bag, same as Jones was. "Hey, how often do you get to deal with the same man being a virgin twice?"</p>
<p>Jones froze, sleeping bag down around his knees, fingers already on the top button of his shirt. "'Virgin'?" he demanded. "You ain't said nothing about that last time."</p>
<p>Andy shrugged and kicked his own sleeping bag away. "Well, unless I started taking up with loose women between when I left Bowduin and when I got to Guadalcanal, I was then too. Maybe I didn't want to admit it." He left it up to Jones to work out how likely that sounded.</p>
<p>"Huh," Jones said. He got to his knees and crawled over to Andy's side of the tent so that he could lay his sleeping bag down flat, then took Andy's and spread it on top of the first. "Here, lie back on that."</p>
<p>There really wasn't enough room for this much manoeuvring, but somehow Jones crawled over Andy as he rolled over to lie on the stacked sleeping bags, leaving Jones the single bed roll to kneel on.</p>
<p>"Never been with anyone, and you can sing," Jones said wonderingly, "thought after two years of living in each other's pockets, there wasn't much I could know about you."</p>
<p>Andy didn't want to think about that, didn't want Jones to have a chance to compare Andy as he was now to Ack-Ack, and maybe decide that he didn't want to do this after all. He grabbed a handful of Jones' shirt and tried to pull him down on top of him.</p>
<p>"Hey, easy now," Jones protested, bracing his arms so that he leaned over Andy, not dragged down. "Let me show you a good time, huh?"</p>
<p>"Okay," Andy agreed, though he was pretty sure whatever he and Jones did would be a good time. He relaxed back into the nest Jones had built for him. If Jones wanted to do all the work, Andy wasn't going to stop him, so long as it happened. He could try taking a more active role next time, assuming Andy didn't mess everything up, and there was a next time.</p>
<p>Jones was already unbuttoning Andy's shirt, his expression intent as each button revealed a little more skin. "Strange seeing you without your tags," he commented, and bent to kiss just above Andy's breastbone where his dog tags would have lain. He followed the rest of the buttons with kisses until he got to Andy's navel and had to deal with pulling the shirt out of Andy's pants. He glanced up at Andy again before undoing his fly, pausing until their eyes met and Andy nodded slightly before going forward. Every look, every kiss seemed to be asking permission, making sure that Andy hadn't changed his mind. Jones was so intent on stripping Andy naked that he didn't seem to notice that he hadn't done more than loosen his top button. Andy sat up enough to get rid of his own shirt, then pulled Jones' blouse free and ran his hands up and down his sides even as he lay back and lifted his hips to let Jones strip him the rest of the way down.</p>
<p>"Christ, you're beautiful," Jones breathed, gazing down at Andy's naked body.</p>
<p>Andy couldn't tell if the heat rushing to his face was due to the embarrassment of lying there exposed, or because of the dark desire in Jones' eyes. "Let me see you," Andy begged.</p>
<p>Jones shook his head and bent down to kiss Andy's forehead, covering the line of the Japanese bullet with his lips, and holding there for a long, slow breath. When he moved back to Andy's mouth, he was more gentle than he'd been before, his lips playing at Andy's, touching one then the other, then the corner of his mouth. His kisses were almost playful as he waited for Andy to respond. Only when Andy opened his mouth, kissing Jones back, did the contact deepen and Jones start to explore his mouth the way he had during that first violent kiss.</p>
<p>At the same time, Jones' hands wandered down to Andy's hips rubbing back and forth over the jut of his hipbones; his skin was rough and hard with callouses, and even the lightest touches made Andy shiver and bow his body up towards Jones' hands. When Jones started to stroke the inside of his thighs, Andy spread his legs to make room for whatever Jones wanted to do. He felt a jolt of trepidation at the idea of Jones just screwing him then and there, but made himself relax. He knew that Jones would never hurt him, and he knew that Jones understood what Andy liked when it came to sex better than Andy himself did.</p>
<p>Still, Jones sensed his fear and stopped kissing Andy long enough to promise, "I ain't gonna do nothing fancy here, okay? Just wanna touch you."</p>
<p>Andy nodded and let his hands fall away from where they'd come to rest on Jones' hips. He lay there completely open and vulnerable to whatever Jones wanted to do.</p>
<p>Jones spat on his own palm, which made sense once he started to stroke Andy's dick. The saliva smoothed his callouses a little, but it still rasped over skin that felt too sensitive to everything. Andy gasped and clutched at the sleeping bags under him, then at Jones' shoulders, but neither one did anything to halt the feeling of the world spinning under him. Jones made his strokes slow, toying with the tip of Andy's cock between each pull, then reaching down to caress his balls before starting over again. He hovered above Andy, braced on one elbow, so that he could watch his face and gauge every reaction to his touch.</p>
<p>"God, please just kiss me already," Andy groaned, again trying to pull Jones down on top of him.</p>
<p>"Shh," Jones murmured, and kept pulling Andy off and watching him writhe under him as Andy tried to feel more. "Shh, easy, Andy, let me do this for you."</p>
<p>"What about you?" Andy asked.</p>
<p>"I'm all right," Jones told him, and squeezed hard enough that Andy almost forgot about everything in the world besides the rough slide of Jones' hand over him. Jones wasn't even touching him anywhere other than his cock, but each caress felt like it sparked over his whole body, so that his scalp prickled and his toes curled with pleasure.</p>
<p>Andy made himself watch Jones, not letting the arousal racing through his blood carry him away, not yet. The way Jones' body lay, Andy couldn't see if he was hard or not, but his eyes were wide and dark, the colour of a clear sky just after sunset, and sweat gleamed on his face. Andy listened to Jones' sharp, quick breaths, and was satisfied that this was doing just as much for him.</p>
<p>"You like this?" Andy asked. He meant to say more, but he couldn't seem to catch his breath.</p>
<p>"Like you," Jones replied. His hand stopped moving, resting with his fingers curled around Andy's balls. He waited there until the rush of pleasure pushing Andy towards orgasm backed off a little. "Like seeing you happy. Like being able to give you that."</p>
<p>"Mmm," Andy hummed, not able to string enough words together to respond, but he could tell that Jones also liked making him lose control, that he took pride in being able to shake Andy loose, and then catch him as he fell. "Kiss me," he said, again, and this time Jones did.</p>
<p>Their lips only just brushed, and when Andy tried to lift his head to capture Jones's mouth with his own, Jones pulled away teasingly, and tightened his hold on Andy's balls. Andy grabbed the back of Jones' neck and rose up with him. He was close enough now to press their chests together, Jones' dog tags falling out of his shirt to sway against Andy's throat. Andy could feel how slight Jones' control was as they kissed again, how he was only just holding on himself. Andy' own heart pounded, and Jones' hips rocked forward brushing into Andy's hip. He was hard.</p>
<p>"Yeah, come on," Andy whispered when he didn't have the breath to kiss him any more. Jones buried his face against Andy's neck and humped against Andy's hip in time with each stroke. "Yeah, that's right; you're doing just fine."</p>
<p>Jones whimpered and froze, his breathing halting for a dizzying second before he gasped and went back to stroking Andy's dick, now with hard, mechanical movements, a precise twist at the end of each stroke, faster, and faster. His body was pinning Andy to the ground so that he couldn't squirm any more.</p>
<p>"Oh, god," Andy whispered as he came. The world skipped a beat, and then flooded back. It was hard to get a proper lungful of air with Jones lying on top of him, pushing him down so hard he could feel the tree root through two sleeping bags, a sleeping mat and the floor of the tent. Jones was also trying to catch his breath, inhaling deeply and holding his breath before sighing, until Andy could feel his heart slowing. Jones' hand was still wrapped around Andy's dick, just holding it gently now. As Andy's own pulse slowed, the air on his sweaty skin turned cold, and he shivered and tried to worm further under Jones' body. He, at least, was still putting off heat like a blast furnace, even with his clothes still on.</p>
<p>"I want to see you naked," Andy told him, stroking down the knobs of his spine through his shirt.</p>
<p>"Oh yeah?" Jones asked, still not moving from on top of Andy. "Well, I was thinking I'd go wash up in the creek, if you wanted to come along. Could be your chance."</p>
<p>Andy didn't really want to contemplate how cold that creek water was going to be this early in the morning, but he also wasn't going to miss out on Jones undressing as the first rays of dawn cut through the tree tops. "I could certainly use a bath," Andy admitted.</p>
<p>Jones got up, and clearly intended to walk down to the stream barefoot in his shirtsleeves. Andy had come all over his thighs, and didn't want to get his pants and underwear dirtier than they were, and decided to follow Jones as he was. Jones glanced over his shoulder at him and shook his head slightly, but didn't say anything to stop Andy.</p>
<p>They took a new fork in the path, going downstream from the fishing spot—"So we don't scare the fish," Jones explained—and by the time they got to a deep pool of clear dark water, Andy was already shivering. Figuring it was best to get it over with before his brain had a chance to catch up with him, Andy took two running steps and dove into the water.</p>
<p>It was absolutely heart-stoppingly cold. So cold that his body froze in shock, and the air left his lungs, and, for a moment, Andy thought he was going to die from pure stupidity. He wondered vaguely if Jones would rescue him, before deciding he had this coming. The cold was so intense that his head started to ache like he'd scarfed down an ice cream too fast, but finally he got control of his limbs back and floundered towards the shore. The rocks were slick with algae, and the moment Andy got his feet under him, he slipped and fell back in with a tremendous splash, though not quite loud enough to drown out Jones' laughter.</p>
<p>Oddly, after his second immersion, Andy got half way used to the water, and instead of trying to get out again, he floundered around and tried to rub the accumulated grime off his body and out of his hair. He didn't know how much he was accomplishing with icy water and no soap, but it had to be something. In the spirit of optimism, he made sure to clean his privates as best he could.</p>
<p>Jones, meanwhile, had stripped to his waist and was crouching at the water's edge, splashing himself. He had brought a cloth and a piece of soap, and seemed to be making a professional job of giving himself a sponge bath, though from this angle, Andy couldn't see much more than flashes of pink skin above the jut of his knees. So much for getting a free show.</p>
<p>"Wash your back?" Andy asked, climbing out of the water more carefully this time. He slicked his hands over his hair to push the water out then ruffled it up, the crew cut tickled his palms and sent a rainbow of droplets into the air.</p>
<p>Jones hadn't answered—he was staring at Andy like he wasn't capable of speech—so Andy took the cloth from his unresisting hold and soaped it up as best he could with cold water.</p>
<p>Andy rubbed the cloth up and down the smooth curve of Jones' shoulders, pausing to lightly knead the muscles so that Eddie moaned and dropped his head like he always did. A full back massage could nearly reduce the man to tears. Andy smiled and rubbed up and down Jones' spine like he had earlier, in the tent, happy to have the shirt out of the way now. "What's the Corps been feeding you?" he grumbled. "I can feel your damn ribs, Hillbilly."</p>
<p>"Infirmary chow, mostly," Jones answered tersely, and Andy felt like he'd said something wrong, but he wasn't sure what.</p>
<p>Either way, Jones leaned forward to give Andy more room to work, and Andy focused on scrubbing the accumulated grime off his back. There was a line of it along his collar, and another at the small of his back above his belt. Andy frowned, and rubbed at a discoloured area along Jones' right side, near the bottom of his ribs. He bent to look closer, and realised it was a scar, still pink and fresh. Something about it made his stomach clench and nausea crawl up his throat.</p>
<p>"What the hell's that?" Andy's voice was harsher than he meant it to be, angrier.</p>
<p>Jones flinched at the tone, but said steadily, "Got shot."</p>
<p>Andy scowled. He knew an exit wound when he saw one. "Show me your chest."</p>
<p>"Andy..." Jones had his head half twisted around to try to see Andy's expression, his brows drawn together in confusion. He had his knees drawn up and arms tucked protectively across his chest, hiding whatever might be there.</p>
<p>"Jones!" Andy snapped.</p>
<p>Jones shook his head, expression setting into something smooth and hard. "I don't know what's got you so het up, Skip, but why don't you go light us a fire and put the kettle on, huh?"</p>
<p>The cloth had fallen from Andy's hand. He only realised that when he saw it on the ground next to Jones' bare foot. There'd been another time like this one, and...</p>
<p>"Hey." Jones too Andy's wrist and squeezed lightly. "You okay?"</p>
<p>"Yeah, I'm fine," Andy answered automatically, but he felt disorientated and dizzy. Why had he just gotten upset? Marines came back from wars with scars. Everett had, going by that Purple Heart. Andy himself had, in more ways than one. "I guess I'll go see about that fire."</p>
<p>Jones watched him carefully for a moment before nodding. "I'm gonna finish washing up. I'll be up in a minute, okay?"</p>
<p>"Yeah, sure." Andy stood and turned to walk back up to the campsite, feet pushing him forward automatically. He wished he'd thought to bring his clothes down to the water. Now that he was standing, the cold hit him all at once, like it had plunging into the water, and he started to shiver so hard that his teeth were rattling by the time he got back to the camp. Pulling on his clothes and Jones' boondockers didn't seem to make a hell of a lot of difference, and Andy thought longingly of the previous morning's scalding coffee.</p>
<p>Jones had refreshed the pile of firewood the night before, so building the fire was mostly a matter of automatic motions, one branch after another, until he had a stack of wood imitating the structure Jones had built. Jones' lighter was presumably had down by the river, but there was another in the glove compartment of the car. By the time he got that far, Andy's hands were shaking so badly it took him four tries to get the thing to strike and stay lit long enough to catch the smallest twigs.</p>
<p>Andy crouched next to the new flames and held his hands over them, until the heat grew to the point where he had to yank them back. By the time he got back from taking the kettle down to the fishing hole and filling it with creek water, Jones had reappeared, freshly shaved, hair slicked back, but already starting to dry, one rebellious curl at a time. He was still eyeing at Andy with that narrow look of concern, but smiled when he saw the fire.</p>
<p>Andy set the kettle down and slumped on the ground next to it, rubbing his hands up and down his arms. The walk to the creek and back had warmed him a little, but he still couldn't seem to knock the chill out of his bones.</p>
<p>"Here, let me," Jones said. He sat behind Andy and wrapped his arms around him holding him tight so that his chest pressed against Andy's back. If he could will the heat to leave his own body and enter Andy's, until Eddie himself were cold and dead, he probably would.</p>
<p>Something awful roiled in Andy's gut, and he felt a shudder go through him that had nothing to do with the cold.</p>
<p>"Tell me about Peleliu," Andy said. It wasn't the question he wanted to ask, but he couldn't seem to form the real one.</p>
<p>"That ain't talk for a fine morning like this," Jones told him. He rested his chin on Andy's shoulder.</p>
<p>"Eddie," Andy said, reproachfully. Jones had promised, no matter how little either of them wanted to hear this.</p>
<p>Jones sighed. "Okay, but I'm telling you, you're lucky to have forgotten it." Then he told Andy, not the little portraits of daily life like he had for the other islands, or the dreamy watercolours of life in Melbourne, but stark, plain lines: how many men they'd lost, no water, heat, the enemy literally behind every rock, boys losing their minds from it all. Jones had ordered one of his own men killed to save the company. "You forgave me for that," he said.</p>
<p>"You did what you could," Andy told him, squeezing Jones' hands where they wrapped around his belly. The twin heats of Jones behind him and the fire in front of him were warming him through, despite the chill of the conversation. "But we went up on that ridge anyway."</p>
<p>"Yeah, we did. Eventually." Jones kissed the back of Andy's neck and got up to deal with the hissing kettle. He set coffee and oatmeal on to brew, and knelt down next to Andy. "We'd lost half the company by then, but the goddamn Corps sent us in anyway. I think towards the end, you and me and Stumpy Stanley were the only officers left. We were all trying to look after everything at once, but we couldn't do it. It was too much, Andy. Anyhow, there was a nest of snipers up in those rocks somewhere, never fixed on where. They picked off the boys every time we tried to get in there, and I led a squad up to try root 'em out, but..."</p>
<p>"I ordered you up there," Andy said, not sure where the words came from. He felt cold again, without Jones behind him.</p>
<p>Jones shrugged one shoulder and poked at the fire with a stick. "Suppose you did. It had to be done. But I got hit, then when the stretcher bearers pulled me out, I got hit again. Next thing I remember I was on a hospital ship half way back to California, with my guts stitched back in and a fever to beat all hell."</p>
<p>"Eddie, you died," Andy insisted. "The boys carried you off, and you..." Andy couldn't finish. All he could see was Eddie lying on the ground, blood all over his chest and stomach, his face utterly still and without peace. "You died."</p>
<p>"Andy," Eddie started to say, but Andy couldn't hear him.</p>
<p>He curled in on himself, clutching his knees and trying to think past the skull-splitting understanding that Eddie was dead, and it was his fault. Andy had lost so many of his boys, and now this, the man he'd promised his whole future to—who Andy should have kept safe above all others—was gone. He'd known what the risks were, but he'd just gestured up the slope, and snapped, "Hillbilly! Take care of those fucking snipers!" Eddie hadn't even replied, just nodded and put a squad together out of the ashes of one of the platoons. It'd been the last thing they'd said to each other. Not five minutes later, Eddie had been dead.</p>
<p>Andy hadn't even been able to say he was sorry, or that he loved him. He'd done his best not to lose control in front of the handful of boys he still had—Haney cracking up had been bad enough—but inside Andy had been screaming.</p>
<p>His heart hadn't stopped screaming for two days.</p>
<p>"Come on Andy," Eddie was saying, arm warm around Andy's shoulders. He had a flask out, and was trying to get Andy to take a sip from it, but Andy turned his head away. It wasn't real. None of this was happening. The last five months were a dream world his damaged, fevered brain had spun out of straw, just to palliate his soul as he himself lay dying on that damn island.</p>
<p>It'd been a nice dream: getting to see his family again, Bowduin, Everett, but he shouldn't have dreamed of Eddie. It wasn't right.</p>
<p>"I gotta say, you're scaring the bejeezus out of me right now, Skip," Eddie said, and he sounded so much like himself that Andy couldn't stand it. He wanted this to stop.</p>
<p>Andy tried to shove Jones away, but his flailing arm hit the flask and splashed its contents into the fire, which flared up with a hiss as the whiskey lit up. Andy closed his eyes against the flash of light, and tried to still his aching head. "I can't," he muttered, but he didn't know what he couldn't do any more.</p>
<p>"Andy, please listen to me." Eddie's voice was low and urgent, and he had Andy by both of the shoulders. "Oh, for Christ's sake." He shook Andy hard enough his teeth rattled and he bit his tongue. "Snap outta it, Skipper!"</p>
<p>The taste of blood in his mouth shocked Andy. He blinked. Eddie was kneeling in the dirt next to him, eyes wide with panic, skin so pale it made his blue eyes look like they couldn't be real.</p>
<p>"Eddie?" Andy asked. Part of his mind was still telling himself that it wasn't real. Eddie couldn't be here because he was dead. But Andy couldn't be here either, somewhere in the hills of West Virginia, learning to fish. It was too detailed to have dreamed up, and none of that made sense anyway.</p>
<p>"Oh, thank God," Eddie mumbled and pulled him into an embrace. Andy hugged him back, feeling the beat of Eddie's heart through his shirt. He dropped his head until he could nose into the side of Eddie's throat and place a kiss on his pulse point. Eddie's fingers dug into Andy's back and he held onto him like they were both drowning. "Jesus Christ, Andy. What the hell happened?"</p>
<p>Andy shook his head, his unshaven cheek rubbing against the smoothness of Eddie's throat. He smelled like river water and woodsmoke, like Andy had always thought he should smell, if they were ever free and back in the States.</p>
<p>"I don't know," Andy said. His head was still spinning, but he was pretty sure that the part that was real was that Eddie was holding onto him for all he was worth, and that Edward Jones was worth a good deal. Andy closed his eyes again and drew in one breath after another full of Eddie's scent. He was warm in Andy's arms, and what more could he ever want than this. He remembered his doubts about trading his life for this man, and couldn't believe himself. Of course he would. He wouldn't even hesitate.</p>
<p>"I remember you dying," he said.</p>
<p>"Remember?" Eddie asked. He pulled away from Andy and hunched down to try get a look in his eyes. When Andy kept his head down, Eddie caught his chin in his hand and tipped his face up. "How the hell can you remember?"</p>
<p>Andy shook his head, which just made it ache again. "I don't know," he said. He reached for Eddie's shirt, hands shaking as he fumbled at the buttons. "Show me your chest," he said again. That was what had started this. Or was it? Andy thought maybe his memories had been drifting back towards him since he'd read Eddie's letters.</p>
<p>"Hey, easy there." Eddie caught his hands and squeezed them together until Andy stilled, then Eddie started in on the buttons himself. When he had his blouse undone down to his belt, he pulled his grubby undershirt up, framing his chest and stomach. Andy's breath caught, and he felt sick, but that didn't stop him from pushing the halves of the shirt aside. In his mind's eye, he could see Eddie lying there, shirt ripped open by the corpsmen, blood everywhere.</p>
<p>"It's not so bad," Eddie said, but he didn't sound like he believed it.</p>
<p>"I've seen worse," Andy assured him.</p>
<p>There were a couple splotchy pink scars, on Eddie's right side below his nipple, and the other further down, a match to the exit wound on his back. Both had surgeon's marks of cuts and stitches around them. Andy traced his fingers over them, feeling the ridges of skin where his last touch had found it smooth. He moved his hand over and placed his palm over Eddie's heart: still beating. How had he not seen that before?</p>
<p>"I was so sure," he said. He looked up, meeting Eddie's eyes. "I'm so sorry."</p>
<p>Eddie let his shirt fall back and reached out to cup Andy's cheek with his palm. "It's okay," he promised. "It don't matter now."</p>
<p>Andy turned his face so that he could kiss Eddie's palm and glanced back up at him. Lord, he was beautiful. He was staring at Andy with an uncertain smile, like he wasn't sure of his welcome, still. Andy couldn't let that stand. He leaned forward and kissed Eddie, and nothing in his life had felt as right as that, like a piece of his heart had slotted back into place.</p>
<p>They kept kissing, until the fire popped and sparked, and Eddie pulled away, saying that the coffee was ruined and breakfast was getting cold.</p>
<p>"I'm sure it's fine," Andy said, until he took a sip of the over-brewed coffee. "Okay, this is pretty bad."</p>
<p>Eddie dumped some sugar into both their cups without asking, which didn't really make it better, just tooth-achingly sweet. The porridge had started to congeal, and it should have been a miserable breakfast, but sitting shoulder to shoulder by the fire with Eddie, it felt like those meals at the Ritz Andy had spun out of pure imagination.</p>
<p>They ate quietly and choked back the coffee, until finally Eddie worked up the nerve to ask, "So you remember then, Andy?"</p>
<p>Andy'd been trying to think about that, but it wasn't coming together in his head as any kind of a clear picture. "Maybe bits and pieces," he said slowly. "Those last days on Peleliu, some of the things we did together, before; the rest, I'm not sure."</p>
<p>"Do you think you'll get it all back?"</p>
<p>"Hell if I know," Andy admitted. "Maybe. Would it matter to you?"</p>
<p>Eddie's hand had been creeping up to stroke the small of Andy's back, but it stilled, and he frowned at the fire. Andy felt relieved that he was thinking it over, not just falling back on old promises, the memory of what he'd been before.</p>
<p>"You mean am I gone to leave you out in the cold just because you got a few holes in your head?" he asked.</p>
<p>"Something like that," Andy admitted. He'd spent so long agonising over whether he wanted Eddie or not, he hadn't thought until now about if Eddie would want him like this. Andy had been good enough to lie with earlier, but Andy still didn't remember promising to marry Eddie. The concept felt familiar, but he couldn't think of the words he'd used past the ones Eddie had quoted at him. He didn't remember what his post-war plans had been. What if none of that ever came back?</p>
<p>"Well," Eddie said, drawing out the word, and Andy could tell just from his tone what the answer was, "It ain't like I didn't always know there was something wrong with you."</p>
<p>"That's true," Andy admitted.</p>
<p>"But..." Eddie chewed his lip for a moment, considering his words. "I guess it'll be a sad thing if it never comes back. This war's been a whole string of one sad thing after another, and if that's the worst it's got left to throw at us." He shrugged. "You're okay with that?"</p>
<p>Andy snorted. "Eddie, I chose you when I didn't even remember your name."</p>
<p>"Oh." Eddie looked at the fire and blinked a couple of times. "Figured on that just being curiosity. You know? Trying out what you'd missed."</p>
<p>"No, I was going to keep my promises," Andy insisted, and his voice was rough now too. "I know you didn't expect me to, but I wanted to. I want to do everything with you." He'd said that before, he thought, the first time he'd admitted that he wanted to kiss Eddie back, years ago in Melbourne.</p>
<p>"I still got a year left on my commission," Eddie said, like he needed to make sure Andy understood that it wasn't going to be as simple as that.</p>
<p>"I'll wait," Andy promised. He let his head fall on Eddie's shoulder and snuggled up against his side. "It'll give us time to plan."</p>
<p>"It'd ain't gone be..." Eddie started, but this time he stopped himself. "Aw, hell, don't know why I'm trying to talk you outta this. Should grab my good luck and run, 'fore someone comes looking for it."</p>
<p>"You should," Andy agreed. He was still prodding at the inside of his head, feeling at the edges of the memories he thought he had, trying to match them with bits of letters and Eddie's stories. The more he thought about it, the foggier it all got, so he gave up and rubbed his cheek against Eddie's shoulder like a cat. "I've been waiting for five months for someone to sweep me off my feet."</p>
<p>"That right? Good thing I got to you first, then."</p>
<p>"Don't know if anyone else could have done it," Andy said, but he thought back on all those months of emptiness, of not quite knowing who he was, or what he wanted, months Eddie had spent thinking Andy didn't want him, and felt compelled to add, "I'm sorry I didn't read your letters sooner. You shouldn't have had to wait."</p>
<p>"Skip, I'd have waited for a thousand years," Eddie told him, but Andy could tell from the roughness in his voice that he'd been waiting for that apology for a long time.</p>
<p>"Let me make it up to you?" Andy asked, like he had in the tent, but this time he knew the true weight of that, what he'd have to give Eddie to reconcile things between them, and it was everything he was eager to give.</p>
<p>"You already have," Eddie said, "but I can't say as I'd object to seeing you try some more."</p>
<p>"Always," Andy said and made a promise to himself this time: that he'd spend every day trying to make it up to Eddie, and every night too.</p>
<p>"Yeah?" Eddie asked, the uncertainty still in his voice, but instead of waiting for an answer, he glanced up at the sky, sun now high above the trees. "Well, way I figure it, we got time to try for a few more fish. I can drop 'em off for Ma before driving you back to Massachusetts."</p>
<p>"I can take the train," Andy said, though his heart wasn't really in it. "That's got to be an eight, nine hour drive."</p>
<p>"I'm not letting you out of my sight," Eddie told him, wrapping his arm around Andy's shoulders. "What if you forget about me again?"</p>
<p>Andy didn't think that was possible, not now, but still they should have a plan for it, just in case, even if it was only to make Eddie feel better. He needed to buy Eddie a ring, too. "Then you'd better come up to Lawrence and hold me to my word."</p>
<p>Eddie considered that for a long moment, then nodded to himself. "All right. Deal," he said, then kicked out the fire and started down towards the creek to fish. Andy followed.</p>
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